A King's Commander (27 page)

“Kind of you, sir,” Lewrie rejoined, stifling the fiery retort he really wished to say back. It was possible that Cockburn was genuine with his offer, that he really
was
such a stickler for details. Or was such a toplofty sod he didn't understand when he gave offense.

Lewrie, though, had never been more than ready to be chary of other men's motives, and was pretty sure he was being deliberately galled.

“For the nonce, sir,” he continued, still with a thankful smile on his face, “I'll have to let my guns be my guinea stamp.”

“Ah!” Fremantle coughed with sudden relief. “M'boat. Good day t'you all, sirs. Captain Cockburn . . . Commander Lewrie. Confusion to the French.”

Alan had to admit he was a bit behind the latest Regulations for Sea Officers' dress. But then, they almost all were. The latest directives ordained the addition of a vertical scallop “slash-cuff” over the sleeve rings of rank, with the gilt buttons moved inside, and vertical instead of horizontal. And finally, after years of grumbling that the senior naval uniforms were too plain compared to the Army's, they were allowed to wear epaulets. Commanders got a plain, fringed gold-bullion epaulet on their left shoulder. Captains of less than three years' seniority got one on the right, while full post-captains were to sport the full pair. Cockburn had already obtained his, though few of the others had so far bothered, so much at sea where it didn't make one damned bit of difference, on a foreign station out of sight of Admiralty or fussy port admirals.

“My thanks for your excellent suggestion, Captain
Coe-
burn, sir,” Lewrie said, continuing to doff his hat, turning to include Cockburn in the salute he'd just given Fremantle. “I'll toddle on down the queue, if you will excuse me? B'lieve your boat is next anyway, sir?”

“Quite,” Cockburn replied, giving him a brief, jerky head-bow.

As Lewrie wedged in astern of
Ariadne
's
captain but before the juniors who commanded the lesser ships, he took time to look over the harbor, searching for a useful boat he could purchase as a tender to
Jester.
Even with a replacement cutter on her boat-tier beams, he had three
small
boats to work with. A local-built
tartane, lateenrigged fishing boat or small coaster would best suit his purpose, he decided, something around fifty-feet long, or so, about half
Jester
's
length. A two-master, perhaps, which would be fast enough to chase, shoal-draught enough to go very close inshore . . . and could pay for herself at least fifty times over, were they lucky.

Another thought struck him, as he was at last being rowed back to
Jester
in his gig. Were they to wage full-fledged commerce warfare, then why were they limited to the
Genoese
coast? While Nelson had said little about Savoian ports—nothing, really—hadn't his hands encompassed them when he'd shown them the chart?

Wait a bit, Lewrie enthused, squirming on his padded thwart; he had! “. . . any ships bound for France, or any port
now occupied
by the French,” he'd directed.

Better pickings, he speculated; easier pickings? Troops all off far to the east, with only small garrisons left in the backwaters, and shipmasters thinking themselves safe as houses that far west. Around Cape Antibes and San Remo, he thought, defenses might be lighter, yet the effect of a raid could hurt the long French supply trains just as badly. Maybe worse; they'd have to divert troops and guns from their march on Genoa to protect those neglected ports, spread their ships too thin, which escorted or patrolled . . . ! And, most profitably, yield the value of contraband cargoes as prize money, with no other British warships “In Sight”!

Confusion to the French, indeed, he thought with a feral grin of anticipation. Eager to be at it. And to get ashore quickly to grab a tender before the others thought of it. And get those changes to his uniforms done, after all; as long as he was at it.

L
ewrie's
problem was being a bit “skint” himself, short of the wherewithal to pay the outrageous prices Genoese masters or captains asked for their fishing boats. So
Jester
had departed Genoa in mid-July without a tender. Once at sea, though, he'd simply taken a suitable vessel.

Bombolo,
her owner had named her, a tartane
of only forty feet in length, tubby and broad-beamed. She'd been running along the Riviera coast, fat, dumb, and happy—Thomas Mountjoy, whose command of Italian idiom was growing by leaps and bounds, told him her name meant “A Fat Person,” and was therefore particularly apt—off San Remo. There'd been no beach to ground on, no convenient inlet into which she could slip, and
Jester
had cut inshore of her. She was Savoian, and empty of anything of value, save for a few casks of fresh-caught fish. But she had attempted to flee, which Lewrie wrote up in his report as the sort of “suspicious activity” Nelson's orders had warned him to be on the lookout for.

A quick palaver, at gunpoint, with her terrified captain, and the deal had been struck. With three casks of their catch in her longboat, the captain and his small crew allowed their freedom to row away—and Lewrie's offer of £30, in silver shillings—he'd “bought” her.

“Quoins full out. When you're quite ready, Mister Bittfield,” Lewrie ordered.

“Number one larboard gun . . .
Fire!
” Bittfield shouted. A ranging shot howled away for the tiny, extemporized “fort” sited on a low bluff overlooking the entrance to the harbor of Bordighera. A sleepy town awoke to the clap of thunder, and the crunching rattle of rocky soil and shale blasted loose from the bluff, just below the redoubt.

There was an answering bang from the shore, as one of the guns in the three-gun battery returned fire, adding a bloom of smoke to the cloud of dust that hazed the morning air below the thin flagpole and French Tricolor.

“Cold iron,” Lewrie spat to Mister Buchanon, as he saw the shot fall far short, and wide to the left by at least a hundred yards. And if the battery corrected their lateral aim, they'd still fire astern of
Jester,
for at least their first or second full salvos.

“Number two gun . . .
Fire!
” Bittfield shouted, pacing aft as if he were firing a timed salute, with the Prussian quarter-gunner Rahl almost frantic as he scampered in advance of him, tugging and trimming the aim and elevation, casting urgent glances over his shoulder to Mister Bittfield, to see if he was still scowling at him.

A touch higher, a touch to the right, that second shot; fountaining gravel and dirt just short of the low stone rampart. An officer on horseback appeared, with one or two aides, to the right of the battery, and unslung a telescope. So close was
Jester
to the steep-diving shore that they could hear the faint, whistle-through-your-teeth tootle of the garrison being called to battle by fifes and drums.

“Number three gun . . .
Fire!
” Bittfield barked.

“Oh, bloody lovely!” Lewrie beamed.

That shot scored a direct hit on the rampart; nine pounds of iron ball striking between the two right-hand embrasures. Poor mortar, or no mortar—perhaps the wall had been quickly erected with its stones laid as loose as a Welsh pasture fence—but when the dust cleared, down it had come, creating a fourth embrasure on the seaward side, a ragged gap, with a skree-slope of tumbled rock below it.

“Number four gun . . .
Fire!
”

Down the deck the tolling went, gun after gun lurching backward on its truck carriage, to chip away at the top of the rampart, smash in low on the wall, skim just over it, or pummel the soil beneath, making a pall of dust and smoke to obscure the French gunners' aim.

“Larboard batt'ry . . . make ready for broadside!” Bittfield cried, raising a fist in the air. “Wait for
it!
On the uproll . . .
Fire!”

Nine carriage guns went off as one, this time, shaking
Jester
to her very bones, reeling her sideways to windward a foot or two. A shot amputated the flagpole, bringing down the tricolor; the rest battered down a stretch of wall, flinging rocks as big as men's heads into space. The officer on horseback fought to control his terrified, rearing mount, and the mounted aides vanished. As the dust and smoke cleared, Lewrie could see at least one French field-artillery piece laying canted on a smashed wheel and carriage through the vast gap his guns had blown.

“Mister Hyde!” Lewrie shouted, fanning in front of his face for fresh air. “Hoist the signal to Mister Knolles. Mister Buchanon, we'll put the ship about on the larboard tack. Porter? Pipe ‘Stations for Stays' and ready to come about!”

Little
Bombolo
wheeled about from her position astern and to seaward of
Jester,
easing the set of her conventional jib, winging out her large lateen mains'l, and bore off north for the harbor entrance. At the same time,
Jester
swung south into the wind, tacked, and sailed to her support, to re-engage what was left of the battery with her right-hand guns.

“Steady . . . thus,” Lewrie told the helmsmen. “All yours, Mister Bittfield!”

“Starboard batt'ry . . . ready broadside . . . on the uproll . . .
Fire!
”

Closer, this time, within a quarter-mile of the shore, and even the carronades blazing away from foc's'le and quarterdeck bulwarks. A hailstorm of round-shot savaged the entrance face of the battery, and more stone flew in the air, more gravel and dirt slipped down the hillside to patter into the sea. One shot from the French, who had gamely wheeled one of their light field guns to a spare embrasure, from that unequal combat on the sea face. A shot that went warbling low astern to raise a tiny splash seaward of
Jester
's wake. The tricolor showed itself again, risen on the stump of the flagpole by some brave soul . . . now only a little higher than an infantry regiment's banner.

“'Ey got spirit, Cap'um,” Buchanon commented, when he took his attention off the sea to starboard for a moment.

“We'll shoot that out of 'em, sir.” Lewrie grinned.

“Ah,
'ere's
'at rock ledge . . . well t'starb'd. Missed it by at
least
a quarter-cable, sir” Buchanon grunted with professional pride. “No worries. Deep water, clear t'th' entrance.”

With the fort so busy with
Jester,
and being pounded into road gravel, little
Bombolo
was free to breeze into the small harbor without a shot being fired at her. Around the point, behind the bluff fort, there sounded the panicky patter of musketry, fired at impossible range.

“Broadside . . . ready . . . on the uproll . . .
Fire!
”

And another exchange of shots. Two French guns, this time, but still badly laid and aimed. One ball struck short, skipped twice, and struck
Jester
's
starboard side, just below the mainmast chains with a dull
thud.
It hung for a second in the dent it had created in the oak planking just below the stout chain wale, then dribbled off to splash into the sea. The second whined overhead, not even clipping rope.

Once more the tricolor went down, as the fort shivered to the monstrous weight of iron, and the wall between the embrasures slumped. Flinty sparks, smoke, and dust flew. Then the
Whoomph!
of gunpowder cartridges as a reserve went off like a miniature Vesuvius, flinging rock and gravel a hundred yards offshore, creating a rising gout of smoke, and the hint of flames at its base.

“Near midchannel. Ease her, Quartermaster. We'll enter harbor in midchannel. Mister Buchanon, hands to the braces,” Lewrie called. “Wind's from the sou'east. Wear us for a run, with the wind large on the starboard quarter.”

Around the point and under the bluff, the land fell away toward the town on the right-hand side, the shoreline of the harbor almost a full circle, as if cut from the rocky coast with the rim of a cup, with high hills all about behind the bluff's short peninsula. He could see that Bordighera held slim pickings. There were three shabby locally built tartanes
tied up to a stone quay near the center of town, a narrow and rocky beach to the right, and a much wider, softer beach to the left of the inlet, where at least two-dozen small fishing boats no bigger than the ship's jolly boat rested with their bows on the shingle and gravel.

Bombolo
was coasting toward the quay, prompting the crews of the tartanes
to flee ashore, into the streets leading uphill. But down from the battery, at least a hundred French infantry—two companies? Alan thought—that had formed a line midway between the fort and the town, were jogging townward to intercede. The mounted officer appeared again, this time at the infantrymen's backs, his sword drawn, to spur them on.

“Mister Bittfield, that lot!” Lewrie shouted. “Load with grape and canister. Quartermaster, put your helm alee two points, to lay us closer inshore o' those buggers.”

Pistols were popping on the quay. With his telescope, Alan saw a few men in French naval uniforms, falling back from their vessels to the buildings as Knolles's raiding party came alongside the largest of the tartanes
.
No more than half-a-dozen, against Knolles's fifteen, he thought, abandoned by the rest but still game. A swivel gun banged and a uniformed Frenchman went down. A two-pounder boat gun went off aboard
Bombolo,
spraying canister into the front of an impressive shorefront commercial building, and dropped another. The rest at last fled, far outnumbered and outgunned.

“Loaded an' run out, sir,” Bittfield reported. “Range 'bout two cables. Too far forrud o' th' carriage-gun ports, but we're sailin' faster'n they can trot, sir!”

“Steady, Quartermaster. We'll stand on a little closer. Do you be ready, Mister Bittfield.”

“Ready!” Bittfield yelled to his gun captains. Tacklemen and loaders, rammermen and powder monkeys stepped dear of recoil, of the rope tackle that could ensnare a foot and have it off. Lanyards were pulled taut to the flint-lock strikers. Quarter-gunner Rahl, more used to the employment of artillery against troops in the field, scampered onto the forecastle, after directing the train of the forward-most gun.

The French soldiers were intent on getting to the quay, to stop Knolles from taking those small coasters, of getting into the town and the main square just above the quay, to volley or snipe from cover. A moment more, Lewrie thought, wondering if those local charts were right, and he had depth enough along that shore. But for the creak and groan of the hull, the swash of water, and the rustle of the wind and sails, it was, for a moment, peacefully silent. He could distinctly hear the rattle and thud of boots on the roadway, of musket butts clapping upon bayonet scabbards and sheathed short swords, canteens and metal plates and cups hung from knapsacks tinkering one another, as they jogged at the double-quick.

“Helm up to windward, Quartermaster. Lay us parallel to them,” Lewrie said at last.

“
Wait
for it!” Bittfield soothed as
Jester
swung her bows about, and the shoreline road and its panting target appeared in the gun ports. “Wait for
ittt!
”
He squatted to point over the number one nine-pounder.

“Nein, Herr Bittfield!” Rahl countered from the foc's'le. “
Der mitte kanon!
Middle, zir!” He fanned his hands to mime the spread of shot of a full-dozen barrels; carronades and long guns. “
Verbreitung . . .
der spread!”

Bittfield swore under his breath, but trotted aft to the waist. Wiser than the small French garrison, the Savoians of Bordighera had gone to earth, or run for the hills above their hard-scrabble little town. The dusty harbor street down which the infantry pounded, among the first shantylike outlying homes and tiny shops, was shuttered and closed, not even a dog or curious cat in sight.

“Proceed, Mister Bittfield.

“On the uproll . . . !” Bittfield screeched, drawing breath for his final shout.

The mounted officer reined in his horse savagely, making it rear once more, as if suddenly realizing he'd bitten off more than he or his men could chew. The rear-rank men at the tail of the column, the file closest to the low stone boundary markers of the shoreline road, suddenly shrank in on themselves, looking over their shoulders, hunched as pensioners.

“Fire!”

It was not over three hundred yards from ship to shore when that broadside erupted. Canister, so Army artillery texts stated, was most effective out to nearly five hundred yards. And, in Army usage,
Jester
carried the equivalent of three four-gun batteries—a battalion of guns!

The ship shuddered and complained with wooden groans as gun smoke blotted out the view. Ashore, it was an avalanche that swept everything away in a twinkling. Dust flew, low shrubbery wavered and frothed, and the stucco fronts of low houses and shops were dimpled and crazed to the brick beneath, and roof tiles were flung into the air, some in shards, or whole. Precious glass windows shattered, wood shutters and awnings disappeared, all those screechings and crashings lost in the terror-stricken wails—the death screams— of the infantrymen, who were scythed away. Plebeian dun stucco was splattered or sheeted with gore. The officer's horse was flung over a waist-high fence of a pigsty, its rider—minus an arm and a leg—flung the opposite direction, and his gleaming sword did a silvery pirouette, twirling over and over.