H. M. S. Cockerel (33 page)

C H A P T E R 9

H
ow
did it go ashore, sir?” Lieutenant Scott asked when Lewrie came back aboard
Zélé
from headquarters.

“Routed 'em, thank God,” Alan replied sleepily, too sleepy to be enthused. “O'Hara's aide-de-camp was crowing merry. Six hundred Frogs dead or wounded, he said. We lost sixty-one or so.”

“Bloody good odds, then,” Scott crowed in his turn. “And damned good return on investment.”

“They think the Frogs threw an entire corps against us,” Lewrie yawned. It was barely first light, and a chill mist hung over Toulon. He'd been roused long before his usual hour—nothing new in the Navy—but with a bit more urgency than usual, too urgent to allow him his morning tea or chocolate or a morsel of bread. “Think of it, a whole corps! That's what . . . three divisions? Nine or ten thousand? If we'd lost Fort Mulgrave, we'd have lost the whole of the Heights of de Grasse and both the forts by the Gullet.
Then
where'd we be, I ask you? If they have that many to throw at us on a whim, then . . .”

“Aye, and we'll keep on killing 'em, sir,” Lieutenant Scott boasted with his usual scorn for French courage and skill, “at ten or twenty to one. They'll go bankrupt, wagerin' at those odds. On a whim.”

“It's too early to argue the toss,” Lewrie sighed. “Have we anything hot yet?”

“Frog coffee, sir,” Scott scoffed. He was a tea-and-beer man. When forced to drink coffee prepared in French fashion, he found it a too-hot, too-stout and bitter brew.

“Gittons?” Lewrie called. “Send down to the galley for a mug of coffee for me. I'll be in the chart space.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mister Scott, round up Lieutenant de Crillart and the
comandante
if you'd be so kind. We've something new planned for today.”

• • •

“Here, sirs,” Lewrie said, with a jab at the chart with a ruler. “On the east, for a change . . . in the Plaine de la Garde. We hold Forts Malgue and Saint Catherine on the east side of town, the batteries at Cape Brun, the Post of Brun, and little Fort Saint Margaret, about at the midpoint of the coast . . . here, to protect the Bay of Toulon. A few days ago, the Frogs . . .
pardonnez moi,
Charles . . . the Republicans, under General Lapoype, moved into Fort La Garde and occupied it. And the ridge here, in the middle of the plain behind it. I'm told we had La Garde long enough to ruin it . . . blew its powder vaults, toppled the parapets, disabled the guns there . . .”

“No way to 'old eet, so far from ze ozzer posts, wizout cavalry for ze resupply,
hein?
” de Crillart surmised.

“Exactly, Charles,” Lewrie agreed, much more agreeable with his second steaming mug of coffee in his other hand. “We have to resupply all our coastline posts by water, as it is. Well, General Lapoype has guns and mortars in the ruins of La Garde again, and he's opened on any supply boat he sees. Malgue's guns don't have the range to reach that far, and the ridge blocks Saint Catherine's. The coastal strong points have guns, yes, but they're sited to fire to seaward, and the garrisons have only field guns . . . regimental six-pounders and such . . . facing inland. Saint Margaret is taking a pounding, too. So, were we to work our way to . . . here, east of Saint Margaret . . . There's a low spot along the coast road, near this beach. And about a quarter-mile offshore there's six fathom depth. Stripped as this raft is, we only draw two. More muddy sand that close ashore, and the rocks are smaller, so we'll have better holding ground.”

“An', ve observe s'rough zis gap, from ze fighting-tops,
oui?
” de Crillart smiled, then translated for Comandante Esquevarre.

“Ze
comandante,
'e say alzo,
mes amis
. . .” de Crillart supplied after a long palaver, “zat ze enemy 'ave
très difficulté
to attack zose coastal posts, vere ve to destroy
zese
string of
ponts.
Deux
roads de La Garde,
sud
of ze ridge. One eez good groun', direct at ze Saint Margaret, 'ere. Go pas' Les Savaux, Plan Redon, to ze coast road.
Mais
ze ozzer, east of ze Plan de Galle, eet go
sud,
to Notre Dame de Bon Salut an' ze Chateau des Pradets, zen down to ze Plage de la Garonne.”

“Ahah?” Lewrie inquired.

More palaver back and forth.

“Ah, ze
comandante,
'e say,
vous-êtes
sailors,
mais
'e eez soldat. 'E see what
vous
do not. Zey place batteries on ze heights near ze Notre Dame de Bon Salut, an' to ze west . . . zey comman' ze Bay of Toulon.
Non
sheep enter or leave ze bay. Zey shoot into ze Great Road.”

“Ah,” Lewrie said with slow comprehension. “That
does
put a different light on things.”

“But, 'e say,” Lieutenant de Crillart continued with a sly grin, “zere are le Petit Pont, 'ere. Groun' eez . . . mmm, 'ow you say . . . ?”

“Marshy,” Scott offered with an impatient grunt.

“Ah,
oui,
marshy!
Merci, m'sieur
Scott.
Deux
bridges, zen road cross zis stream on a s'ird . . . anozzer bridge cross marshy . . . marsh, zen a fift', ware ze
sud
road cross ze la Reguana Reever. Comandante Don Luis, 'e weesh to use ze mortars on zese bridges,
aussi.
After ve bombard ze Fort La Garde.”

“So if they mean to move their army against Toulon, they'd have to come direct west, right into the teeth of our fire, or try to skirt past the end of the ridge and face the guns of Fort Saint Margaret, on their flank, while they're all strung out?”

“Ze Comandante do not believe zey do zis,
mon capitaine.
'Ere are ze reever, an' ze stream, zey mus' still cross, on ze good road to Plan Redon, zen turn west across Pont de la Clue. But zat ees covered by Fort Malgue, Post de Brun, Saint Margaret . . .” Charles shrugged in heavy, Gallic fashion, with a snort of amusement to show how hopeless an endeavour that might be.

“Comandante, just to do a complete bit of work, why don't we blow this Pont de la Clue whilst we're at it, today? Last of all?” Alan suggested. To which, after a translation, Don Luis was quick to express his agreement.

“Cony?” Lewrie called out the door to the gun deck.

“Aye, sir?”

“How's the fog?”

“Thicker'n London, sir,” Cony answered, after a weather-wary eye at the sky. “But, 'ere's a wind comin' up, sir. Not much o' one, but a breeze. Might blow off, in'n 'our'r two, sir. I c'n see 'bout two musket shot'z all.”

“That'd be just enough visibility for us to warp out and row,” Lewrie speculated, tossing away his ruler and dividers. “Sound our way down to the entrance in the log boom, then set course through the Gullet. Hug the coast all the way, so they won't even know we're in place until the first shell. Let's be at it, then. Cony, my respects to the bosun, and he's to sound ‘All Hands.' Stations for leaving harbour.”

“I think I can see now,” Lewrie enthused, aloft in the fore-top. It had been hours before they could make anything out farther off than a quarter-mile, and had more felt their way east, than anything else. But they had
Zélé
anchored now in four fathoms of water, east of Saint Margaret in a little cove where the Hieres Road ran close along cliffs which were much lower than the rest of that daunting coast, where that road dipped between two hills into a depression. “That's it, I think.”

“
Has
to be La Garde, sir,” Lieutenant Scott muttered, spying the place out with his own telescope. “Now the fog's burned off enough . . . sure to be. The only hill west of the ridge. Circular central keep, with four arms and circular ends. Just clear enough . . .”

Scott traded his telescope for a sextant and slate.

“I make it a mile and three-quarters, sir,” he concluded. “And it appears we're anchored broadside-to.”

Lewrie looked at his watch: quarter 'til ten in the morning and nothing stirring yonder, due to the fogs. The French had been blinded as effectively as everyone else on such a gloomy morning. There was a wind up now, from the sou'west, blowing into the cove quite briskly, and rattling a chop against the base of the cliffs, ruffling wavelets over the wide, shingly beach to their right. A wind which would blow their powder smoke away quickly, making it difficult for the French to discover their position. It might even take them awhile to find that it wasn't a new mortar battery installed at Fort Saint Margaret itself!

“Let's give it another quarter-hour, Mister Scott. Let Don Luis have a peek at it, and then we'll open fire,” Lewrie decided.

“Aye, sir. I'll fetch him.”

By the time Don Luis de Esquevarre, his
aspirante,
and sergeant-gunner Huelva had ascended the mast, though, the fog had been blown clearer. Fort La Garde was no longer nebulous, but sharp-edged in the telescopes, and Don Luis was eager to open upon them at once, pleading that it would take hours to further reduce the place. It
was
a masonry fort, after all!

“Bueno,”
Lewrie grinned, clapping Esquevarre on the shoulder. “We begin, Don Luis.
Sí. Fuego.
”

Lewrie went back to the deck by a standing backstay while Comandante Esquevarre and his aides had to use the lubber's hole in the top and clamber down the ratlines and shrouds with lands-men's clumsiness. A full ten minutes was spent inspecting safety precautions, just to be sure no one had omitted a step in the drill due to overfamiliarity or boredom. The gun deck was running with water from the pumps, the companionway to the orlop was trickling sea water, the magazine passage was wetted down from overhead to decking, the felt screen was soaked, the hides were up in the laboratory aft . . . Only four kegs of powder were aft to fill shells at any one time, the excess covered with wet haircloth, the fuse chest covered except for extraction of the called-for timing. Thirty-two pounder great-guns empty and tompioned, bowsed up to the port sills, and only two sets of slow match burning in the mortar well, properly guarded.

“Garguen los morteros,”
Esquevarre ordered.
“Garguen a bombardear.”

The left-hand mortar was prepared, the touch hole reamed out and primed with fine-mealed powder. The tallow seal was scraped off the top end of the fuse.
“Fósforo . . . preparado . . . fuego!”

Another day of noise and smoke had begun.

“Over . . . and left, sir!” Mister Midshipman Spendlove shouted down from the fore-top. “At the foot of the hill!”

“Close, for a first try,” Lewrie beamed, as the
aspirante
told his commander what that meant in Spanish. Esquevarre fiddled with the traverse a touch, cranked in a tiny change in elevation for the right-hand mortar whilst the left hand was being thoroughly swabbed out. Up came a powder charge. Out came a fixed shell.

“Fósforo . . . preparado . . . fuego!”

Blam
went the world, loud as thunder at one's elbow, rocking the floating battery so hard it felt like she'd been hit with a substantial slab of cliff.

“On target! Right in the center, sir!” Spendlove screamed with delight. “Spot-on! Yayy, give 'em another!”

“Carry on, sir,” Lewrie laughed. Damme, but we've gotten main-good at this service, he thought smugly, going to the ratlines to go aloft to enjoy the morning's work.

With French and British help to do the carrying, they got into a rhythm of one shell a minute. It took the French at least ten to even begin to respond, and their first shots in reply were directed at the closest coastal fort, Saint Margaret, just as Lewrie had thought. And he didn't think the small garrison there enjoyed being taken for the goat.

Within an hour of hot practice, the fire from La Garde began to slack off. It had been furious for a while, shells dropping all over on the cliffs, on either side of the saddle between the hills, probing far afield, into the cove and upon the beach as they shot over initially.

Then the first shell came singing overhead with a whistling moan. It landed far out to sea, perhaps half a mile away, to splash a feather of spray, then burst. A minute later there came a second, also an over, more off the bows, to their right, but closer in.

“They're correcting to our smoke,” Lewrie sneered to Spendlove as yet a third shell followed the same path, and blew up close to shore but far to the right, almost dead on their bows. The wind was veering, more from the west now, ragging their stupendous powder pall eastward, lower to the water before it collided with the back eddies off the bluffs, so it might appear to the French that a gunboat was hidden in a cove even farther east, where it at last arose beyond the lip of the cliffs.