The King`s Commission

Chapter 2

Among the many things Alan Lewrie hated about the Navy was the need for cold dinners. The biscuit was thick and unleavened, hard as a deck plank, and could only be eaten after being soaked in beverage; that is, as soon as one had rapped it on the mess table enough to startle the weevils out of it. The cheese purchased by the Navy was Suffolk, hard and crumbly and the very devil to choke down. There had been no time to get Freeling to dig into their personal stores for a more chewable Cheddar picked up at Wilmington, and the sudden call to Quarters had brought them boiling back onto the upper decks, while the ship echoed with the sounds of expected combat. Doors and partitions slammed as they were struck down and carried to the hold so they would not form splinters that made most of the injuries in battle. Chests and personal gear went below as well. A towed boat was brought up alongside and the captain's furniture and the livestock were tossed into it, the sheep bleating and the hens in their crates squawking; a thin-shanked bullock was simply tossed over the side to sink or swim as God and the tropical sharks willed. Hundreds of horny bare feet slapped as men ran to their guns, the gangways, to the clew lines ready to reduce the main course and brail it up to the yard to reduce the risk of fire. Chain slings were rigged aloft to prevent spars from breaking loose and falling onto the packed mass of men who would be serving the guns. Boarding netting was slung over the decks and draped in unseamanly bights to protect against a surge of men over the rails should they lay close-aboard an enemy, and to form a screen against blocks and tackles (and bodies) falling from aloft.

"Two-masted schooner," Railsford said, studying the despatch boat with a telescope. "I believe we have the reach on her, sir. She'll not get past us, even as weatherly as she is."

"That frigate is closing as well, though." Treghues nodded, lost in thought. "I make her a twenty-eight. Do you concur?"

"Aye, sir," Railsford agreed, swinging his glass to eye the other vessel, which was coming on in the schooner's wake in her support, a little wider off the wind since she was a square-rigged ship and could not beat as close-hauled as a fore-and-aft rigged ship. They were on a general course far north of the British fleet anchorage, almost on a bearing for the northern limb of Frigate Bay, where the French Army had landed two weeks before.

"One point harder up," Treghues said. "Lay her full and by as close to the wind as we may. I shall want the wind gauge even should she turn away and run down back to her protector."

"Aye, sir."

Alan turned to the starboard rails and looked back towards the fleet anchorage. There was another British frigate back there to the south trying to close up with them, but she was nearly two miles off, and could not be up with them for some time.

Laid close to the wind, Desperate put up a brave picture, her battle flags streaming from every mast, her bow slamming into the bright tropical waters and flinging spray as high as the bow sprit, wetting the foresails with an atomized cloud of salt water, and the quarter wave hissed down her side and spread out like a bride's train of white foam.

Alan leaned over the bulwarks to see how the suction of the wave on her quarter exposed the weeded quick-work of her bottom that rarely saw daylight, heeled over as she was against the wind. Spray flew about in buckets, splashing as high as the quarterdeck and showering him with cooling droplets now and again.

Damme, this can be exciting on a pretty day like this. Alan beamed. This is a glory. Makes up for all the humbug.

"Ahem!" Monk coughed, drawing Alan's attention back inboard, and he walked back down to the wheel and binnacle with some difficulty on the slant of the deck, his shoes slipping on fresh-sanded planking, getting traction from the hot tar that had been pounded between the planks.

"I hopes the hull meets yer satisfaction, Mister Lewrie," Monk said. "The captain ain't payin' much attention now, but juniors don't go ta windward if the captain's on deck-that's his by right."

"A cod's-head's mistake, Mister Monk, I admit," Alan realized. "But you'll be happy to know the coppering is fairly clean."

"Aye, I'm sure the bosun un the carpenter'll be pleased," Monk drawled pointedly. "Now stay down ta loo'ard, iffen ya don't object."

"Aye aye, sir."

Alan joined Sedge, the other master's mate. He was older, in his very early twenties, a Loyalist who had joined the Royal Navy years earlier, and who was thirsting for revenge against the Rebels who had ruined his family. He was a thatch-haired and ungainly fellow with a hard hatchet face, and so far had been no more friendly than he had to be to get along in the mess, or on duty.

"Think we'll get a chance to fight 'em?" Alan asked.

"Na, this schooner'll run to momma, an' momma'll drive us off," Sedge opined gloomily. "She's a twenty-eight. You kin mark her, if you've a mind now. Long nines for chase guns on her fo'c'sle, ten carriage guns abeam-twelve-pounders most like-and six-pounders on her quarterdeck."

"Only one more gun than us per broadside."

"Aye, but twelves, not our nine-pounders," Sedge said as though Alan had uttered some lunacy worthy of Bedlam. "An' two of our nines aft're short brass pieces just as like ta blow up in our faces sure as damnit."

"Wish we still had the 'Smashers,'" Alan shrugged, giving up on making pleasant conversation with a man who looked more at home tumbling out of a hay-wagon than on a quarterdeck. "Then we'd give 'em the fear of God and British artillery."

"Aye, but ya left 'em at Yorktown, didn' ya?" Sedge sneered. "I told ya. There she goes, haulin' her wind, runnin' for safety."

Alan thought the comment was grossly unfair. The "Smashers," the short-ranged carronade guns that threw such heavy shot had been commandeered by the Army. They had lost them, not anyone in Desperate, and now two older long-barreled six-pounders graced the frigate's fo'c'sle as chase guns. But then, he realized, Sedge was ever the graceless lout.

The despatch schooner had indeed fallen off the wind to wear to the west-nor'west to take the Trades on her larboard quarter, running off to leeward and the protection of the French frigate.

"Ease your helm, hands wear ship! Due north, quartermaster!"

The waisters and idlers sprang to the braces to ease them out to larboard, angling the yards to allow Desperate to take the wind on her starboard quarter, so they could interpose between the schooner, frigate, and the shore, maintaining the wind gauge advantage. The French ship eased her helm as well by at least a point, screening her weaker consort. The two warships were now on two sides of a triangle; one headed north and the other nor'east. If allowed to continue, they would meet about two miles west of the port of Basse Terre.

The schooner passed close ahead of her escort, then gybed to the opposite tack and began to reach sou'west away from the anchorage with the wind abeam. Moments later, the French man o'war came about as well, but instead of wearing down-wind, she threw herself up into the wind's eye for a tack. Since it slowed her down so much to do so, Desperate began to close her more rapidly.

"Helm up a point, quartermaster. Hands to the braces!" Treghues bawled. Desperate turned a bit more westerly of due north, taking the Trades more directly up the stern, a "landsman's breeze."

"She'll pass astern o' us; mebbe a mile, mile un a half off," Monk speculated, calculating speed and approach angles in his head after the Frenchman steadied on a course sou'sou'west to provide a mobile bulwark for the schooner.

"About two miles off now," Treghues commented, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Once astern, they could come about and try again, with us north of them and to leeward. They'd get into Basse Terre before we could beat south to interpose again."

He paced about at the windward rail, from the nettings overlooking the waist to the wheel and back, his fingers drumming on his ornately engraved and inlaid sword hilt.

"Hands wear ship, Mister Railsford! Gybe her and lay her on the same tack as yonder Frog. If we shall not have her information, I do not mean to allow her to pass that same information ashore for lack of effort on our part."

"Aye, sir!" Railsford shouted. "Stations for wearing ship! Main clewgarnets and buntlines, there, bosun!"

"Spanker brails, weather main cro'jack and lee cro'jack braces!" Alan cried at the afterguard men. "Haul taut!"

"Up mains'l and spanker!" Railsford went on with a brass speaking trumpet to his lips. "Clear away after bowlines, brace in the afteryards! Up helm!"

Desperate fell off the wind more, her stern crossing the eye of the wind slowly, for she was no longer generating her own apparent wind but sailing no faster than the Trades could blow.

"Clear away head bowlines! Lay the headyards square!" Railsford directed as the wind came directly astern, gauging the proper moment at which the foresails would no longer be blanketed by the courses and tops'ls. "Headsheets to starboard!"

"Main tack and sheet. Clear away, there. Spanker outhaul and clear away the brails," Alan added as the wind drew forward on the larboard quarter.

Within a breathless few minutes, Desperate was squared away on a new point of sail, paralleling the Frenchman to the sou'sou'west, and just slightly ahead of her by a quarter-mile.

"Smartly done, Mister Railsford." Treghues nodded in satisfaction at how professionally Desperate's crew did their sail drill.

"Thankee, sir." Railsford beamed. "Steady out bowlines! Haul taut weather trusses, braces and lifts! Clear away on deck!"

"He's shivering his mizzen tops'l, sir!" Alan pointed out as the French frigate tried to slow down, possibly so she could pass astern of Desperate and still get up to windward for Basse Terre,

"He's a game little cock, isn't he, Mister Railsford?" Treghues chuckled. "Once he gets an idea into his pate he won't give it up. Back the mizzen tops'l and haul in on the weather braces. Get the way off her."

Realizing that he could not dodge about Desperate, the Frenchman came up close to the wind and began to put on speed once more close-hauled, closing the range slightly. Oddly, Treghues let her approach to within three-quarters of a mile; just about the range of random shot, before ordering Desperate to haul in once more and maintain the distance.

"Pretty thing," Alan commented to Monk after a quick sharing of a telescope with the sailing master. The frigate had a dark brown oak hull, with a jaunty royal blue gunwale stripe picked out in yellow top and bottom, with much gilt trim about her bulwarks scroll-work and taffrail carvings of cherubs and dolphins and saints. Her figurehead could almost be discerned, a sword and shield-wielding maiden surmounted by a gilt fleur de lis crown.

"She's hard on the wind to close us, sir," Alan noted.

"Aye, but we'll draw ahead if she stays so," Monk growled.

There was a sudden puff of smoke from the Frenchman that blossomed on her far bow, then was blown away to a mist by the Trades. Seconds later, the sound of a shot could be heard, a thin thumping noise. She had fired one gun to leeward, the traditional challenge to combat. Evidently the French captain was so angered at being stymied by Desperate's maneuverings that he wanted to vent some round-shot spleen upon her.

Alan looked back at Treghues and saw the glint in his eyes. It would be galling to refuse combat, especially for a ship and captain under a cloud for previous actions, no matter how unfair the accusation was, and Alan could see Treghues' jaws working below the tan flesh of that narrow, patrician face.

No, he can't be thinking of it! Alan quailed. We can't fight a twenty-eight. We've done enough to clear our hawse already!

"Mister Gwynn, fire the leeward chase gun," Treghues said. "Brail up the main course, Mister Railsford. I think this stubborn Frog needs a lesson in manners. Mr. Peck, would you be so good as to assemble the band and have them give us something stirring?"

The starboard six-pounder banged, and the ship's boys with the drums and fifes met in the waist just below the quarterdeck rails and began a tinny rendition of "Heart of Oak," as the waisters and topmen took in the large main course and brailed it aloft on the main yard. The Marine complement paraded back and forth on the lee gangway by the bulwark and the hammock stowage, which would be their breast-works in the battle to come. A few of them who were better shots than others went aloft into the tops with their muskets and their swivel guns.

The Frenchman was closing fast, close enough to make out her open gunports. Alan groaned to himself when he saw that there were eleven of them. Two bow chase guns, six-pounders like Sedge thought, but only four quarterdeck guns, and eleven bloody twelve-pounders in each broadside battery, not ten! he noted with a sick feeling.

He wished he could squat down below the bulwarks of their own quarterdeck, for with her angle of heel, Desperated decks were bared just enough to make everyone aft a prime target.

The French ship fired, a solid broadside as all her guns lit off together, and his flesh quivered as the shot moaned in at them at twelve hundred feet per second. The range was just about five cables, half a nautical mile. Black shot droned overhead, slapping a hole in the spanker over where Lewrie stood. Fired on the up-roll, upward from a slanting deck, the lee ship had the advantage of range over Desperate. Alan's passion was artillery of all the skills he had been forced to learn in the Navy, and he knew Desperated nine-pounders could not be elevated high enough to reach as long as she was close-hauled and heeled over.

"Finish that verse and then get below," Treghues told his band, and the ship's boys scattered after a final tootle, to stow away their instruments and revert to their roles as powder monkeys who would fetch up the wooden or leather cylinders that held pre-measured charges from the magazines, or to assist the surgeon in the cockpit once the wounded worth saving were hauled below by older men.

"Ease her helm a point free, Mister Railsford, get the heel off her and we'll try our eye," Treghues snapped. "Stand by, Mister Gwynn!"

"Aye aye, sir!" the master gunner said in reply from the waist.

Desperate came more upright by a few feet, the bulwarks seeming to rise up like stage machinery, with the French frigate just slightly aft of abeam, and the range dropping to four cables.

"Quoins half-out!" Gwynn instructed his gun-captains. "Point yer guns! Ready!"

"I leave it to you, Mister Gwynn," Treghues said cheerfully.

"As you bear… fire!"

First the reloaded starboard chase gun, then the first of the long nine-pounders began to bark, the firing rippling down the ship's side one at a time as steady as a fired salute, with Gwynn pacing aft at the same pace as the ignitions. Shot erupted from the black iron muzzles in a rush of flame and sparks and thick clouds of spent powder, and bright beautiful feathers of spray leapt up close-aboard the enemy frigate's side as iron shot ricocheted to thud home below her gunports.

"Lovely shooting, Mister Gwynn!" Treghues commented. "Load with double-shot and hull him this time!"

Alan's legs were quivering with excitement, almost too tremulous to keep him erect as he stood by the wheel with the sailing master. In previous actions, he had been a midshipman on the gun deck, too busy supervising the loading, firing and running out, too intent on gunnery to think much about being afraid, about being maimed or killed, lost in the heat of the moment. But as a master's mate, his main role was to act as a sitting duck of no mean seniority on the bare quarterdeck, which would be the prime target of the French after they got within musket-shot.

Another broadside from the French, a positive avalanche of iron, and Desperate shrieked in oaken agony as things let go aloft. The mizzen royal and't'gallant yards were smashed by bar-shot or chain-shot, and the pieces rained down into the overhead nettings. A Marine and a top-man from the mizzen tops'l thumped onto the nettings like bloody steers, the Marine minus both legs at the crotch and spraying a scarlet shower on the deck.

"Firing high as usual," Treghues noted with a frown of disapproval. "When shall they learn?"

Desperate's guns were thundering once more, slamming four-inch, nine-pounder iron balls into the French ship, this time concentrated 'twixt wind and water, right into her hull. Planks were shattered and nibbles were taken out of her upper-works bulwarks, scattering the enemy Marines who had been gathered for a musket volley or two. But, being bigger and heavier enough to handle 22 twelve-pounder guns, it would take a lot of nibbling to do her damage, for her scantlings were thicker, her beams and cross-pieces were heavier and stronger.

"You've made your point, you damned fool," Alan grumbled aloud under the sound of the cannonading. "Now get a way on and get us out of here. Honor is redeemed and all that shit!"

But Treghues was in nautical Paradise, pacing back and forth in a maniacal joy, oblivious to the blood trails on the quarterdeck, or the hurt Desperate had suffered aloft.

"For what we're 'bout ta receive…" Monk whispered the old saw as the Frenchman's side lit up like red signal fuses seen through a thick fog, a fog of powder smoke that rolled down from Desperate to the foe. The smoke seemed to glow, and then the world was hammered into matchwood.

The starboard bulwark by the ladder leading below to the waist was flung into ruin, and a cloud of oak splinters flicked through the air like startled sparrows. Men were screaming like frightened horses, and Desperate staggered as heavy shot burst through her sides. The deck below Lewrie's feet jumped, almost throwing him to his knees.

"Eighteens if they's a pound!" Monk managed to say, grabbing onto the binnacle and traverse board table to stay erect.

"No more than twelve-pounders, surely, Mister Monk," Alan said in a shaky voice, trying to maintain that maddening sang froid demanded of a professional Sea Officer.

"Felt like eighteens, anyway," Monk spat.

As the smoke began to rag away, Alan could see that the enemy was now on a parallel course, just two cables off. She would not get closer; but then he realized, she didn't have to, for she could lay out there a fifth of a nautical mile away and shoot Desperate to lace unless they did something soon.

"Helm up, quartermaster!" Treghues yelled through the din as the guns belched fire again. "Bear down on her!"

Two loblolly boys stirred the savaged body of a petty officer by the torn-up starboard gangway. They shrugged and rolled the body to the hoie in the bulwarks aid tipped the corpse over the vide.

"That was Mister Weems!" Alan burst out in shock.

"Aye. poor bastard," Monk agreed. "There'll be an openin' fer a new bosun's mate tamorra."

A screaming waister was picked up on a carrying board and taken below to the cockpit surgery as they watched. There was nothing to be done with the dead or the hopelessly wounded but to get them out of sight and out from under foot. Words could be said later from the prayer book.

More shot screamed in, and Desperate reeled with its impact. More screams from the waist, a puff of smoke from the nettings that set hammocks writhing like a box of worms as a round-shot scattered them. A Marine keened and fell from the gangway clutching his belly. Dull flames licked around the torn canvas from a small explosion, and men from the larboard side rushed to pour water on the fire before it could take hold and eat their ship.

One cable's range now; two hundred yards. Alan went forward to the quarterdeck rail to look down into the waist. A larboard gun had been overturned and its crew decimated. As he watched, the loblolly boys dragged another screaming unfortunate to the midships hatch, a man as quilled with jagged wood splinters as a hedge-hog. The dead Marine was being passed out a larboard gunport and someone was retching bile as he used a powder scoop to shovel up the man's spilled intestines. The gun crews labored away with their scarves around their ears to save their hearing, intent on their artillery. Burney, up by the fo'c'sle, and Avery in the waist, were pacing among their men, shoving them to their places and speeding them along. Then the guns were barking and recoiling back against their breeching ropes, hot enough now to leap from the deck instead of rolling backwards on their small trucks.

Another broadside from the French, and this one felt like an earthquake. Alan clung to the hammock-nettings as the ship felt as if she had been slammed to a halt. Something whined past his head, and the hammocks before him punched him in the crotch. He looked down as he was bent over by the pain and saw a chunk of the bulwark, nearly three inches across and a foot long, sticking from the far side of the barrier.

"Bloody Christ!" he yelped, feeling his crotch in fear he had been de-bollocked, and was relieved to feel that his "wedding-tackle" was still.there. The deck continued to tremble with each strike and there was a lot of screaming from back aft as he winced with his pain.

"Lewrie, stir yourself!" Treghues bellowed, pointing behind him to the wheel, where men lay torn and bleeding.

Alan limped aft, bent over. Mr. Monk was propped up by the binnacle with Sedge bending down over him. The rotund sailing master had been struck in the leg with a grape-shot ball, a full ounce of lead that had almost ripped his limb off above the knee, and was now hanging by a few tattered sinews. Sedge was seizing a piece of small-stuff about the upper thigh to staunch the copious spurting of blood, and Lewrie knelt to aid him.

"Sedge, ya've more experience, do ya take charge," Monk gasped from a pasty white face sheened with shock-sweat.

"Aye, I shall, Mister Monk," Sedge promised as the surgeon's assistants rushed to his side with a carrying board.

"At least Dorne won't have ta saw much to take this bugger," Monk tried to jest, too freshly wounded to feel much pain yet. The loblolly boys rolled him onto the board, strapped him down, and made off with him by the larboard ladder, and Monk began to moan as the pain hit him. "Hurry me below, damn yer blood!" he cried out.

"Spare quartermaster to the wheel," Sedge barked. "Hot work, ain't it, Lewrie?"

"God's teeth, yes!" Alan concurred.

Sedge laughed and strode away to assist Toliver the bosun's mate in ordering the afterguard into shape once more, leaving Lewrie by the wheel with two new white-eyed quartermasters who flinched every time something whined nearby, their feet slipping in the blood trails of their predecessors.

"Watch your helm," Alan told them, being careful to station himself to windward, using them and the wheel drum as a shield.

The guns were now firing as fast as the frightened and weary crews could load and run out, all order lost in the maelstrom of battle. Every few seconds there was discharge, followed by one from their foe. Lieutenant Peck and his Marines were now firing by squads from the rail, and the masts of the French frigate were towering alongside, nearly as high as Desperated own; less than half a cable off, perhaps sixty yards and adequate musket-shot. To confirm it, a volley of balls hit the quarterdeck, one warbling off the rim of the compass bowl, another raising a large splinter from the deck before Alan's feet.

Desperate reeled again like a gut-punched boxer.

"Mister Lewrie, come here!" Railsford yelled through a speaking trumpet. "Go forrud into the waist and take charge!"

"Aye, sir?" Alan said, dashing to his side.

"Gwynn is down!" Railsford snarled, shoving him to the larboard ladder. "Go, no time to chat about it! Keep the guns firing!"

Alan hammered down the ladder to the waist. The master gunner Mr. Gwynn was stretched out on the deck to larboard, his shirt and waist-coat sodden with blood, and flecks of bloody spume on his lips as he tried to breathe.

"God save me!" Alan whispered, then mastered himself. "Avery?"

"Aye, sir?" a white-faced David Avery asked, trotting aft.

"I'll take charge. Go aft and tend the gunners there. Is Burney still alive?"

"Aye, sir."

"Good. Quarter-gunners!" Alan bawled, glad to have something concrete to do. "Pace your damned gun-captains! Ordered firing!"

Alan watched as the senior quarter-gunners passed among their charges and stilled their individual efforts, making them work in unison once more, loading and touching off together. He bent down to peer out a gunport at the enemy.

"Direct these guns at the same aiming point, here! Base of the main-mast is your target. Punch a hole clean through her! Burney, do you aim at the base of their foremast!"

"Wait for it, ya stupid get!"

"Prime your guns… point your guns… on the up-roll… fire!"

Three at a time, the guns barked and leaped backwards, first Burney's charges, then Alan's, then the guns below the quarter-deck in the cabins aft.

"Better," Alan snapped. He strode aft to look at the hands as they swabbed out and began to load. Gwynn gave a mournful groan as one of the men did him the merciful favor of smacking him on the head with a heavy mallet to knock him unconscious. He was too badly hurt to live, and the surgeons could do nothing with such a savage chest wound. Out cold and knowing nothing of the indignity, he was passed out through a larboard gunport where he splashed into the sea to drown quickly.

More French iron hammered into them, and Alan fell to the deck as a rammer man staggered into him. A covey of splinters took flight like passing quail over his head, and his head rang with the shock wave of a concussion somewhere. The rammer man was sprawled across his lap with his back flayed open to the spine, and Alan gave it a long thought before shoving him off and getting back to his feet. Damned if it had not felt rather safe flat on his back, out of the line of fire.

"Spare man from the larboard battery here," Alan directed, and a rabbity man darted forward to scoop up the discarded rammer and take his place in the starboard battery.

One of the new midshipmen, the youngest and stupidest, tugged at his coat tails, and he turned to look down at the child.

"Mister Railsford says prepare the larboard battery as we're… we're…" The boy fumbled, his teeth chattering in fear.

"We're ready to what, damn your thin blood!" Alan barked like an exasperated commission officer. It felt damned good to yell at the boy instead of musing on his own quaking.

"We're to come about and rake her, sir," the boy finished.

"Larboard quarter-gunners, to me!" When they had gathered round he told them to ready their pieces, double-shotted with grape for good measure.

"We'm short, sir," a grizzled older man told him.

"Then fetch the hands from the starboard chase gun," Alan told him. "That six-pounder is only making them sneeze. Run out as you are ready and get those ports open now. Starboard battery, load and stand by for broadsides!"

"'Ware below!"

"Oh, Jesus!" Someone cringed as the repaired main yard came down with a crash across the cross-deck beams where the boats usually nestled.

"So much fer fixin' that fucker," a quarter-gunner spat, drooling tobacco juice from a massive wad in his cheek.

With a loud creak, the mizzen tops'l was thrown aback to slow their ship down. Alan bent down to peer out a gunport and saw that the Frogs were drawing ahead rapidly.

"On the up-roll… fire!"

At such close range, even their light nine-pounder shot could do harm to a frigate with heavier scantlings, and the broadside brought a groan of racked timber from the French ship as she was struck hard. Nettings and bulwarks flew, and screams sounded from French throats this time. Alan could feel when Desperated helm was put hard up to windward, even without looking at the waisters on the riddled gangways as they flung themselves on the braces to wear ship.

"Take your time and reload the starboard guns! Sponge out your guns! Overhaul that tackle there, or you'll get mashed like a pasty," Alan called. "Mister Burney, do you take charge of readying the battery. Larboard guns, stand by."

The ship swayed like a drunkard as she wore down-wind, and the yards and masts of the French ship swung across the bow, with the tip of Desperate's bow-sprit barely clearing her mizzen shrouds and taffrail lanterns.

"We may only get one chance at this, so make your shots count," Alan warned his larboard gunners. "Don't aim too high and blow holes in her quarterdeck. Let's put round-shot and grape down the full length of her gun deck, just like a good game of bowls. Tear her stern out, shake her mizzen to shreds."

Willing or not, Alan had to climb up onto the larboard gangway to judge the best moment, his hanger tangling between his shins. They would pass the Frenchman's stern at close pistol-shot.

Damme if we might win this yet! Alan thought as he drew his lovely gift hanger and let the pristine blade flash silver in the sun.

"Ready… as you bear… Fire!"

The larboard chase gun went off and its load of double-shot and grape gouged the taffrail open, shattering the carved cherubs, dolphins and saints into gilt tatters, strewing six French naval infantry down like corn-stalks. Then the nine-pounders began to discharge, and the stern windows, the larboard quarter-gallery and the transom were riddled in a flurry of broken planking. The rudder twitched back and forth and the mizzen mast shivered as it was struck. Screams from the French ship could be heard as her gun crews were mown down by the shot passing down the length of her decks.

"That's the way, Desperates!" Alan howled in triumph, waving his sword over his head in derision at the French he could see on the poop and quarterdeck. Swivels barked from the tops and the Marine sharpshooters let fly. Peck and his squads formed up to larboard and began to volley into her. "Sponge out! Overhaul your tackle! Charge guns!"

Desperate put her helm down and began to swing back onto the wind to rake the Frenchman's stern with the other battery, but the frigate, bearing the name Capricieuse on her torn gilt stern-placque tried to bear up as well, blocking their way.

"Avast!" Railsford screamed. "Helm hard up! Lewrie, ready to rake her again with the larboard battery!"

Quicker to return to her original course, Desperate wavered, then got herself under control. Capricieuse tried to sag down off the wind with her, but Desperate was already to leeward. The angle was acute, but it would be a stern rake, right up through the shattered wood, at least into her after batteries.

"Wait for the transom, wait for the transom!" Alan screamed in glee as he capered up and down the gangway, looking down on his gun crews. Sweating men hauled on tackles to heave the heavy guns up the slightly canted deck. Priming quills were inserted. Crows and levers were shouldered and muscles strained near to rupture to shift the aim of the barrels. Fists were raised in the air as gun-captains signaled their readiness. A few shots were fired by the French from their own larboard side before Desperate passed out of their gun-arcs.

"As you bear… fire!"

One at a time, the guns roared out their challenge, and spat their tongues of flame through the smoke. Wood on the larboard quarter was chewed up. The rudder twitched again as a ball smacked into the transom post. The mizzen swayed and jerked, and Alan could see one ball carom off an interior beam with a puff of smoke and dust and paint to go ricocheting down the length of the gun deck. The after guns belched fire, then Desperate was staggered once more as though she had just been struck hard herself, but Alan could not see one French gun that could bear to do that damage.

Capricieuse sagged down off the wind, fully presenting her stern to Desperate, trying to bring her unused starboard battery into action, and there was no movement from aft to shift their ship's course. Alan scrambled back down to the gun deck off the gangway, where it would be safer to suffer what they were about to get in retribution.

"Got a gun burst aft, sir!" a runner told him. "One o' them brass nines. Blew a hole right up through the deckhead!"

"Tell Avery to deal with it." Alan shrugged, intent on his men. "Load with double-shot! Run out!"

"Tha's just it, sir, Mister Avery's bad hurt, an' the quarter-gunner's dead," the man told him.

"Oh, shit. Hogan, leave the chase gun and go aft. You're a quarter-gunner now!" Alan chilled. He grabbed Hogan as he trotted by and held him close for a moment. "Avery's been hurt. Get word to me on how he is."

"Aye, I'll do that, sir."

"Ports is openin'!" someone warned.

"Gun crews, lay down!" Alan yelped. If they were struck while the men were still on their feet, it would be a slaughter. A second later, the broadside from the fresh battery struck them, and wood and iron howled in agony and the deck shuddered beneath them. Alan stuck his head up and looked around, coughing on smoke and engrained dust.

"Up and at 'em, Desperates, come on, larboard!" he called, rising. "Prime your guns! Point! On the up-roll… fire!"

A ragged cheer arose as the tortured mizzen-mast of the French frigate gave a final shudder and toppled forward, chopped to flinders below the deck by those stern rakes. It fell into component pieces, top-mast dropping straight down as the lower mast fell forward, and the t'gallant and royal masts and spars spiraled about to drape themselves over the main topmast, dragging it sideways in a tangle of rope and canvas.

"Damme, will you look at that!" Alan hooted. "Just bloody beautiful! Keep it up, lads, and we'll have the bastard!"

The aged carpenter came scrambling up from below decks past the parade of powder monkeys, shoving them out of the way in his haste to get to the quarterdeck, and Alan noted that "Chips" was soaking wet from mid-thigh down, which made him suddenly wonder if Desperate would stay afloat long enough to actually "have the bastard," or whether the bastard, damaged as the French frigate was, would end up having them!

The youngest midshipman was back suddenly, tugging on Alan's coat once more, his face streaked with soot and powder stains, the tracks of tears carved into the grime.

"Please, Mister Lewrie, sir, the captain presents his respects, and requests could you spare half a dozen hands to assist the carpenter."

"Hulled and leaking, are we?" Alan asked close, so the hands would not hear.

"Sinking, sir!" The boy quailed, but soft enough for discretion.

"God's balls," Alan breathed. "What next, I wonder? Maple?"

"Aye, sir," the fo'c'sle gunner answered, breaking free of the larboard battery.

"Select five hands who aren't doing us much good at the moment and assist the ship's carpenter, if you would be so kind," Alan directed, trying to remain calm, but it didn't fool Maple, who rolled his eyes in alarm and glanced upward at the cross-deck beams where the boats most definitely weren't any longer. Other than flotsam from a wreck, the boats were the only life-saving devices available.

"Oh, shit, Mister Lewrie, sir!" Maple sighed, dashing off.

If I'd stayed in London, I'd have become a wealthy pimp by now, Alan speculated sourly. I can't even bloody swim!

There was a volley of musketry of such volume and intensity that only a company of infantry could have made it. A larboard waister came tumbling down from the forebraces to sprawl across the breech of a gun, his face shot away and his brains oozing and sizzling on the hot metal.

Alan ducked to look out a gunport once more. Capricieuse was close-aboard, not fifty yards off, her bulwarks lined with men as though her last chance was to board Desperate and take her in a hot hand-to-hand action.

"Quoins out!" Alan yelled to his gunners. "Load grape and canister atop ball! Cease fire and stand by for a broadside!"

"Double-shotted, zurr!" a gun-captain called back.

"Worm 'em out of there and reduce your powder charges! I'll not have another burst barrel!"

"Got grape, but no canister!" another shouted.

"Fuck it! Shoot out your loads!" Alan thundered, at the same time grabbing the nearest powder monkey on his way below with an empty leather cylinder. "Tell Mister Tulley in the magazine I need grape and canister and reduced charges. I'm going to triple-shot the guns!"

That brought Tulley up from below in a rush, his ginger hair sticking up in all directions and his sun-burned complexion glowing at the danger to his precious artillery.

"Damme, sir, you'll burst my barrels! Where's the master gunner? I'll see him and…"

"He's dead and gone, Mister Tulley," Alan said brutally. "Now we have a Frog frigate at pistol-shot and I want round-shot, grape and canister with reduced charges or we're boarded and taken. So what are you going to do to help me?"

"Excess loaders from the starboard battery, fetch canister!" the burly gunner's mate said, his face paling with shock at hearing of his senior's demise, and the straits they were in. "Boys, tell the Yeoman of the Powder Room to issue reduced charges! My God, Mister Lewrie, my merciful God!"

The sound of cannon fire had ceased. Either the French had stripped their gun deck of men for a boarding party, or they were also loading a massive broadside and were waiting for the proper time to fire it into Desperate to shatter resistance just before they came surging over the rails.

"Let's go, let's go!" Alan prodded as the case-shot and grape bags came up, along with the half-size saluting charges. With so much iron-mongery crammed into the muzzles, a larger powder measure would truly burst the barrels, and at such close range, a smaller amount of powder would be preferable anyway. Low velocity shot did not shoot through scantlings clean, but bulged and ravaged them, producing more splinters that ripped men apart, creating more havoc.

The midshipman was back, this time not so polite.

"The captain wants to know what the deuce you're playing at. Mister Lewrie, sir?" the boy wailed. "They are close aboard and Mister Railsford demands you fire into them before they grapple to us!"

"Triple-shotted broadside, go tell them!" Alan growled, pacing past the boy as if he wasn't there. "Go, get aft, you minnikin!"

"Charge yer guns… shot yer guns, round-shot, then grape, then case-shot…" Tulley was directing with the voice of a bawling steer, his face its usual red flush once more.

"Mister Lewrie!" the second young midshipman yelled, dashing to his side.

"Holy hell, will you stop pestering me?"

"Mister Railsford orders you prepare to repel boarders!"

"Run out!" Tulley screeched, and the hands tailed on the tackles to draw their pieces across the deck with the rumble of a cattle stampede as the small wooden wheels of the trucks squealed and drummed.

"Gun-captains to remain, tackle-men and loaders take arms and prepare to repel boarders!" Alan cried. "Tulley, give 'em the broadside and then bring your hands to join me. Let's go, men!"

"Prick yer cartridges… prime yer guns…" Tulley droned on, as the excess hands dug into the weapons tubs for cutlasses and boarding axes, stripped the pikes from the beckets around the bases of the masts, and flung open the arms chests for heavy (and usually inaccurate) pistols. Once more Alan was at a disadvantage, for he did not have any of his pistols with him. He took a tomahawk-sized boarding axe for his off-hand and stuck it into his breeches, unwilling to try his luck with a Sea Pattern pistol again.

"Up to the gangway, quickly now!"

"Take yer aim… stand by…" Tulley called as they scrambled up to the larboard bulwark behind the Marines, who were still volleying into the foe. Sedge dashed past him on his way forward to join the youthful Burney to protect the fo'c'sle. Alan looked back to see Railsford bringing all the afterguard and mizzen mast crew to the break of the quarterdeck to defend the after portion of the ship. Musket bayonets glinted dully from those hands who had gotten a chance to break out the long-arms. Pike heads bristled like medieval infantry ranks, and cutlasses fanned the air as men loosened their arms for the bloody work to come. The French lined their own rails, striped-jerseyed sailors and men in check shirts much like British seamen, naval infantry in blue coats with red facings, with here and there an officer in blue coat edged with gold oak-leaf lace and epaulettes, with red waist-coats.

"Fire!" Tulley finally shouted, and everyone ducked below the bulwarks and nettings as the guns erupted so loudly, avoiding the rush of hot gases and the clouds of smoke, and the whining, ricocheting bits of grape-shot and canisters of musket balls as each piece was turned into a scatter-gun.

Alan stood back up just in time to see Railsford leaping onto the after bulwarks and waving his small-sword in the air. "Boarders!" he screamed. "Away boarders!"

With a lusty roar, Desperate's crew went up onto the bulwarks themselves. Grapnels had been thrown by the French, and British implements flew across to complete lashing the hulls together. Nettings came down as they surged across, leaping the churning mill-race of white water between the ships.

There wasn't much opposition. That final broadside fired at the highest angle of a naval carriage gun had shattered the upper-works of Capricieuse, ripping the rails to knee height and scything boarders into mangled meat. Alan landed atop the torso of a French marine who had lost belly and intestines, his feet slipping in entrails and excrement as he staggered to the inner side of the riddled gangway and fetched up on the rope railing overlooking the waist of the gun deck.

A weak volley of bullets fanned the air and he jerked his head back quickly. There was resistance forward, but Sedge and Lieutenant Peck of the Marines were dealing with that. There was a large party of Marines on the frigate's quarterdeck, but nothing much between, the waist having been stripped of men, and those men mostly were now dead or dying, the few still on their feet tossing down their weapons and raising their hands in surrender, too shocked by the sudden carnage and boarding to wish to continue fighting.

"Take the larboard gangway!" Alan shouted, pointing with his hanger at a knot of men still armed on the other side of the ship.

He dashed out onto one of the wide cross-deck beams that spanned the waist and reached the far side. A man confronted him with a cutlass, but before he could engage, a hole sprang up in his chest and he tumbled to the deck. Alan whirled to engage a second, but a boarding axe sprouted from that man's shoulder, thrown by one of his men, and that foe fell down as well, screaming in agony. The rest threw up their hands quickly and congregated into a submissive knot by the main chains.

"Stap me, that wuz easy," a Marine corporal said at Alan's side. "Jus' 'bout wot ye'd expect from Frogs, ah reckon, sir."

"Disarm the buggers before they get their wits back, corporal," Alan shrugged, sheathing his still unbloodied sword. "Herd 'em up forward with that other lot and don't forget to pat 'em down for knives and such." The corporal's eyes lit up at that order, for it would be a good excuse to loot the prisoners of what little value they carried on their persons, regulations be damned.

"Ah 'spects ye're right, sir, ah'll atten' ta that direckly."

Alan strode aft to the quarterdeck where Railsford seemed to be in complete charge. The first lieutenant had a bloody gash on his head from which gore still oozed, but his blade was properly slimed with the life's blood of a foe, and his face was split open in a magnificent and triumphant grin. There were French dead laying about like rabbits underfoot all over the quarterdeck, over which he paced unconcernedly.

"I give you joy of this day, Mister Lewrie!" he shouted.

"And to you, sir," Alan replied, studiously trying to avoid the sight of so many men reduced to bloody offal.

"God, what a victory!" Railsford went on. "An old tub such as Desperate taking a 5th Rate with twenty-eight guns. How's your French?"

"Bloody awful, sir," Alan told him, beginning to realize just what an improbable thing they had just pulled off.

"Who'd a thought such a thing possible?" Railsford enthused at some length. "Of course, yon thirty-two helped them make up their mind to strike. But ours is the principal effort, and there's glory enough to share."

Alan noted a British frigate of thirty-two guns falling downwind to them rapidly from the main anchorage, possibly the ship he had spotted before fire had been exchanged. Lashed as she was to Desperate, Capricieuse would have been made a prize even if she had emerged victorious over their puny efforts.

"Here, I can't make out a word this queer-nabs is trying to say, not half of it, anyway," Railsford said, gesturing casually with his sword to a knot of French officers, and a suitably senior man jumped back with a start as the tip of that bloody blade got within scratching distance of his nose. "I thought you might help interpret."

"Pardon a mois, monsieurs, parle vous l'Anglais?" he asked hopefully, doffing his hat to the startled senior officer who seemed to be in command, but that worthy merely pinched his nostrils and went into a positive flood of rapid Frog, and stepped back, snapping his fingers to summon a junior officer.

"Monsieurs, permittez-vous, ici l'troisiиme lieutenant de Marine Royale… 'ow you say, three officeur? I 'ave en peu English," the junior officer volunteered.

"Bloody good," Railsford beamed.

"Charles Auguste Baron de Crillart, а votre servis. Notre capitaine la frйgate Capricieuse, Jules Marquis de Rosset." The Frenchman handled the introductions with all of them bowing in congй and doffing their cocked hats. "My capitaine 'e say 'e is 'ave tres honneur to be striking to you, monsieurs."

In sign of their victory, a Blue Ensign was hoisted on a mainmast signal halyard, with the white and gold Bourbon banner displayed below it, and the crews of both British ships raised a great cheer. The French captain screwed his face up into a grimace worthy of a half-frozen mastiff and undipped his smallsword from his belt frog to hand it over with a polished gesture.

With de Crillart translating as best he could, arrangements were made for quartering of prisoners, the care of the many French wounded, and the Christian disposal of the dead. Railsford had to protest that their captain should not have to surrender his sword, since he had put up such a spirited resistance, and after more florid speeches, this privilege was extended to the surviving commission officers as well. De Rosset then bowed his way to the ladders leading to his quarters as though leaving the presence of royalty where one never gave the monarch the sight of a human back, and went below, probably to see what he had been looted of while honor was being satisfied.

"Thank God that's over," Railsford said softly as they turned to go back aboard Desperate. "The prize isn't that damaged, but our poor ship was knocked about pretty badly. Get me a report from the carpenter, and then see who's left in charge of the various departments."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Desperate had indeed been knocked about; she looked as though she had been eaten at by giant rats, her bulwarks jagged and her decks ruptured and sprung. Nettings, rigging and sails hung about her like a funeral shroud, and those spars and sails still aloft had been shot through so completely a brisk breeze would have brought them down in a total ruin. The sound of chain-pumps clanking made a mournful tempo as streams of flood-water gushed from her. Men picked about her decks to find the wounded or the dead, and the sailmaker and his crew were already at work on the quarterdeck sewing up shrouds for burials.

A quick trip below into the holds assured Alan that their ship would not sink, though the repairs and patches had not stopped the leaks but had only slowed them to a manageable in-flow.

"We'll be at the pumps all the way ta Antigua, sir, but we've got a chance, iffen we could fother a patch er two," "Chips" told him.

That seemed good encouragement, which lasted only until Lewrie got to the surgery on the lower decks, and Dorne gave him the bad news.

"Mister Monk has passed over," Dorne began, in between suffering seamen as the leather cover over the midshipmen's chests was sluiced clean of blood and torn flesh with a bucket of seawater. "The loss of blood was too great, I'm afraid. And our captain was struck down in his moment of greatest triumph as well."

"Dead?" Alan asked, ready to spew at the sights and smells and sounds of the surgery. Could we be lucky enough to be rid of him? he thought.

"No, praise a merciful God, merely splintered, and if suppuration does not set in, he stands a fair chance for recovery. Hoist him up here," Dorne directed as a moaning body was laid out on the table. "That arm shall have to come off. Who is he, one of ours?"

"A French seaman, I believe," Cheatham the youngish purser informed him after looking at the pile of clothing on the deck that had been cut off the unfortunate. Cheatham took a swig of rum from a cup, to steady his own nerves, then offered it to the Frenchman's lips for him to suck on as an anodyne.

"Wondered where he was," Alan muttered, shivering with chill at the sight of the man's rivened arm, and the instruments that Dorne was removing from a bucket of bloody water for reuse.

"Who?"

"Treghues," Alan said.

"Non, non, mon dieu, non!" the Frenchman screamed as the weary loblolly boys took hold of him to keep him still, and Dorne lifted up that arm and quickly flensed the flesh away above the major wounds, not five inches below the shoulder. Cauterizing irons sizzled to stop the flow of blood from opened arteries and veins, and the air was putrid with the reek of scorched flesh, and the savage rasp of a bone saw.

"Oh, Jesus," Alan said, turning away, ready to faint, ready to "cast his accounts" on the slimy deck.

"Fifteen seconds, I make it," Dorne grunted, pleased with himself as the amputated limb dropped to the deck. "It is a point of pleasure to my professional skills that I never cause undue suffering by taking long, once a course of action has been found. Sutures, quickly now, while he is unconscious. Hogan, more cotton bast for this."

Alan staggered away from the table, almost tripping on the legs of the many wounded who groaned and cried out in agony.

"We win, sor?" someone asked.

"Aye, yes we did," Alan nodded, almost unable to speak.

"Tis Judkin, sir, is the captain arright?" the captain's servant asked, his face almost muffled with bast and bandages, with only part of his mouth free.

"I am told he shall live, Judkin."

"'At's right good, sir, 'e's a good master ta me. 'Ere, Mister Lewrie, 'tis Mister Avery over here," Judkin piped, full of good cheer. "Mister Avery, sir, Mister Lewrie's come a'callin' on ya."

Avery had been stripped bare and covered with a scrap of sail, and what flesh was exposed had been scorched by the explosion of that burst gun, cooked the color of a well-done steak, oozing red.

"Oh, Jesus," Alan reiterated, kneeling down by his friend as David Avery gasped air through his open mouth. "David? Hear me?"

Avery seemed to be trying to whisper; his lips moved, but no words could be made out. His eyes opened for a moment, bloodshot as cherries floating in coal sludge, staring blankly at the deckhead.

"David, 'tis Alan," Lewrie said louder, bending down near the young man's ear. Avery only closed his eyes and gave no sign of awareness, but continued to breathe as though each one would be his last. His body was shivering as though the touch of air on that overheated flesh was excruciating. "Do you want anything, David? Water?"

There was no response, just the uneven heaving of that charred chest. Alan stood back up, almost cracking his head on a deck beam in his haste to flee the compartment, tears flowing down his face.

Too many people he had come to like had just died, too many of the warrants and mates he had dealt with on a daily basis for nearly a year in Desperate, so that it felt much like the grief a sole survivor would feel of a Red Indian massacre.

"Ah, Lewrie!" Sedge called out as he spotted him on deck. "I was wondering where you'd got to. Mister Coke needs help with jury-rigging the mizzen mast. Well, get with it! We've not time to moon about!"