H. M. S. Cockerel (51 page)

C H A P T E R 9

S
oldiers
gathered to larboard, huddling below on the gun deck or hunkered down behind the bulwarks, on their knees. Aristocrats in the tops, cautioned to clear the enemy's foredeck; rifled hunting guns loaded and primed. Once again, Lewrie deplored his stupidity, dearly wishing he had but three light swivel guns aloft, one in each fighting-top, to spew clouds of pistol-ball or langridge.

Lieutenant de Crillart was amidships in the waist, his gunners low to the deck behind the guns of the larboard battery, which had been run-in, charged and shotted, primed, and run-out to the port sills, double-shotted with their few precious grape-shot loads atop solid-shot, with the powder monkeys ready with only one more cartridge bag, the gunners ready with only two more round-shot for a second double-shotted broadside, before they'd abandon their guns, take up small arms, and board.

It was a slender hope, he knew, a tenuous, neck-or-nothing act of desperation, no matter how enthusiastically he had couched his plan to the others. He paced to the windward bulwarks of the quarterdeck, studying his command, looking astern at the French corvette. She was now within two hundred yards of
Radical
's
stern, banging away with her starboard bow-chaser about once a minute, and employing her two forrudmost main-battery eight-pounders which could be crowed or levered about to bear. Whilst his own gunners had been reduced to the single twelve-pounder in the great-cabins of the larboard battery, and the lone eight-pounder stern-chaser to larboard, as well.

The frigate? He turned to look to the north, downwind. There she was, overhauling the trailing transport at last, gunsmoke shrouding her side, the transport attempting to shoot back. But too far off to even hear the reports of their guns.

The corvette, again—perhaps twenty yards closer, up to wind-ward by about a single musket-shot.

“Quartermaster? Nothing more to loo'rd,” he called. “Begin to luff
up,
spoke at a time. Very slowly.”

He heard the clinking of bottles somewhere.

Damned good idea, he thought; someone's thinking. Liquor your boots for
this
madness. And wishing he had a glass of something, too.

“Sir?” Cony called to him from the waist.

“Aye, Cony?” He forced himself to grin, going forward to look at his long-time man. “Bloody Hell, Cony, there a dram left for me?”

Will Cony held an entire armful of squat port bottles, swaying a bit more than the sea demanded, as if he'd been into all of them. With him was an older French gunner, who bore a short, smouldering linstock with slow match coiled about its length, and laid in the top fork.

“Nary a drop, sir, sorry,” Cony laughed. “Me an' Monsooer Ahnree, here . . . sorta sampled it, like.”

“Sampled, aye, you rogue,” Lewrie scowled.

“Aye, sir . . . sampled. But poured h'it overside, mostly. Sir, do ya 'member Spratly Island, sir? Them pirates' wine bottles, an' th' whale oil we foun'?”

“God's sake, Cony, we don't wish to
burn
her!”

“Nossir, but Mr. Bittfield, 'e cut me some slow-match fusees, an' 'twixt us, 'im an' 'is powder yeomen, we made up some grenadoes. Oncet we're aboard, sir . . . thought they might come in 'andy.” Cony chortled, quite half-seas-over after his “sampling,” and full of cherry-merry bonhomie. “Mayn't kill too many, do they work. But they might put th' wind up 'em, yonder. Keep 'em from rushing th' foc's'le too eager.”

“Cony, you're a godsend. Aye, good thinking,” Lewrie praised. “Wish I'd had half the wits to think of 'em, myself! Go at 'em, man. And Cony?”

“Aye, sir?”

“I expect to see you among the quick, once we're done. I don't relish breaking in a new bosun's mate after all this time, any more'n you . . . well,” Lewrie said, turning sombre. “God go with you, and all good fortune, Will Cony.”

“Same t'yew, sir,” Cony chirped. “B'sides, sir, z'much trouble I'm in back in Anglesgreen? I reckon the Good Lord knows a rogue and a weed when 'E sees one, Mister Lewrie. An' 'E jus' might get a laugh outa seein' me try t' wriggle, when we gets back 'ome.”

“True enough,” Lewrie laughed, turning back to his worries.

Dear Lord, You know Your weeds, don't You, Lewrie addressed his Maker silently; You know
me
for a rogue, already. I'm sorry 'bout my doin's in Naples. I'm sorry for . . . well, no, I'm
not
really sorry 'bout Phoebe. Plain truth, Lord? Started out of sympathy—pity for her. Now . . . God save me, I think I'm half in
love
with the little mort! I fall before the hour's out—thankee for Caroline, and the children. Look after 'em for me, as best You're able. And—thankee for Phoebe, Lord. You made a poor rakehell sailor damn' . . .
awfully
happy, for a few days. Don't let any harm come to her. I left a note, should I not be 'mongst the quick when this is over. Let 'em find it, so she could draw on my funds, start over somewhere. Not be . . .

He shook himself all over, lifted his head and took a deep lungful of air to clear his gloomy thoughts. There was the corvette, close now. Less than one hundred yards astern, less than fifty yards up-wind. More of her starboard gun ports were opening as she ran them out to fire. They'd bear now, levered to the forrudmost rims of the gun ports. But even with quoins fully out, breeches hard on the carriages, she'd not be able to shoot high enough to damage rigging or harm the upper decks, as heeled-over as she was by the press of wind. Another advantage to be below her, he took time to gloat, the one thing he had over which he
could
gloat. These last few minutes of stern-chase they had not been able to fire at anything but his waterline or his stern. Up to windward, the lee guns were always canted too
low
for good gunnery.

He squatted down as the corvette let fly, even so. Four balls struck almost immediately,
thonking
into
Radical
below the quarterdeck. There were screams, womanly cries, grunts of alarm from men. But his ship had taken the corvette's best fire, and his frigate's timbers had proven tough enough to hold.

He stood back up, wincing as some French marksmen began to fire with their muskets. A ball whistled past his ears like a bumblebee. Alan ignored it, judging his moment. Lifting his arms slowly, taking in a breath with which to scream . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . !

Now!

“Porter!” he bawled, feeling faint and dizzy with the effort he put into his cry. “Scandalise her! Quartermaster, helm hard alee! Ready, the larboard battery! Troops on deck, muster in the waist!”

Round she came, luffing up to windward, yards crying and sails cracking like gun shots, masts groaning and loose gear coming adrift from aloft. The square sails were being brailed up, goose-winged by Spanish reefs, the foresails and jibs' sheets freed, the braces let ease.
Radical
slowed quickly, going from a painful struggle to flee to a weak surrender, the sort of rubbery-legged shudder a deer chased to exhaustion might display as it came to a halt at last, tongue lolling and ribs heaving to face the dogs, and its death.

The French corvette stood on for a startled moment, laid as full-and-by as she could lay, as
Radical
fetched up across her course, under her bows, almost at right-angles to her. She began to swing away, haul her wind, hoping to shave past
Radical
's stern, within spitting distance.

But Lewrie's borrowed frigate had come up in-irons, dead in the eye of the wind, her square-sail yards purposely thrown all-aback, flat against the apparent wind, then against the
true
wind, as she groaned to a dead halt in a welter of disturbed water, began to make a slight stern-board!

The corvette's bowsprit and jib boom came thrusting inward like a lance, soaring over the larboard side, steeved high into the air, almost as high as the main-course yard, just before the main-mast chains. Her sprit'sl yard, crossed beneath her bows but not deployed, tangled in the stays, ripping off, rigging lines parting like pistol shots, timbers moaning in agony as her elaborate beakhead rails were crushed back into her bows, as her cutwater slammed into
Radical
with a monumental, hollow booming that shook both ships like striking a rocky shoal at-speed!

Everyone was knocked off their feet—
Radical
shuddered—her side gave way to the impact of nearly four hundred tons of oak and iron striking her almost at right-angles!

“First grapnels, away!” Lewrie howled, getting to his own feet, even without looking. “
Tireurs,
there! You marksmen!
Tirez!
Charles, give her a broadside!”

Radical
's
gunners clambered back to their guns, opened their gun ports, and ran out. Men teamed up on crow levers to shift their charges to aim inward, aiming point-blank at oak scantlings mere feet away, the twelve-pounders far fore and aft laid so canted at their ports they'd snap their breeching ropes. Musketry aloft snapping and cracking, shouts of fear from the French gunners on the foredeck and foc's'le as lead struck about them, clawing at their wounds as they were picked off before they could get back to serving their guns. Or freeing the flung grapnels.

Then
Radical
fired her broadside. Twelve hundred feet per second, a ball flew when it left the muzzle of a naval artillery piece. Grape-shot . . . more like a sack of hard iron plums . . . and eighteen-pounder solid round-shot behind that . . . the corvette screamed! Wood cried out as it was blasted away, timbers flew, scantling planking whirled in the air! Thuds and thonks rose from her as
her
gun deck and mess deck were turned into a pair of bowling pitches, and heavy iron tore through tight-pressed men, overturning artillery on carriages, shivering masts as they struck on the lower trunks. Carline posts, scantling, decks, overhead deck beam timbers broke or were turned by caroming ricochets into jagged clouds of wood splinters, bits and pieces as big as bayonets, flicking quick as birds, quilling sailors and making them cringe or cry in terror.

Lewrie scampered to the larboard gangway above his guns, sword drawn. “Cockerels, to me!” he called, waving his tars to join him at the bulwarks. “Grapnel men? Boarders? Boarders, first! You, too, my man!” he shouted as he espied Cony and his French mate with their port-bottle grenadoes. They came with muskets, pistols, and cutlasses bare and brutally glittering. There was nothing subtle or scientific about cutlasses—they were choppers, not really swords.

“Now, Cockerels . . . ready? Follow me, lads!” he screamed, to left and right. “Boarders! Awwayy, boarderrss!”

They surged across the narrow space, scrambling along the foot ropes and bracing cables below the ruin of the corvette's jib boom and bowsprit, weapons in one hand and leaping from fore stay to fore stay with the other. Some spryer topmen sprinted down the jib boom, as if running across a wide log footbridge, horny bare feet tough and sure on pine spars and wound-rope doubling bands. All with a hank of white cloth tied round their left biceps over their shirts or jackets, marking an ally for the sharpshooters above.

There was a quick mêlée among the survivors of the bow-chasers' crews, those who had not already been picked off, or had fled. French sailors were overrun in a twinkling, hacked down with cutlasses or axe heads, a fleet few screaming in terror and scampering over the top of, around the sides of, the petty officers' heads in the roundhouses of the forward bulkhead.

“Kennedy!” Lewrie shouted from the beakhead platform. “Bring your men, now! Grapnels! We'll take 'em to the anchor catheads! Be ready with pistols!” he said, drawing the first of a borrowed pair.

He climbed up from the beakhead platform to the foredeck, and the abandoned chase guns, shouldered into the bulkhead, and hopped up for a view, trying to scale it. A French sailor was climbing atop it with a musket in his hands. Eye-to-eye, not a single yard between!

He brought up his pistol cack-handed, snapping it back to full-cock with his sword-hand wrist, leveled and fired. The man's forehead turned plummy, and the back of his skull was blown out, flinging blood and brains in a sudden rain behind him. His own dying scream was echoed by the men who'd been in his rear, trying to dash forward to repel.

“Up, men!” Lewrie yelled. “Give 'em pistols! Point-blank!”

His men erupted from either side of the bulkhead and the roundhouses, shouldering into rough line and leveling their weapons. Guns went off from both sides. A British sailor was flung backwards with a howl. There was a sharp crack, a cloud of smoke from the far side, and more howls among the French, followed by another light explosion, and the air sang with lead and broken glass! Cony and his grenadoes!

Lewrie got to the top of the bulkhead, crawled across it and looked down onto the forecastle. There were half a dozen dead below, a like number writhing and shrieking . . . but a full two dozen running forward toward him. Muskets crackled near his ears, making them ring, and a few of the French skidded or tumbled to a halt, the ones behind tripping over them, and coming to a stop. Lewrie drew his second pistol, glanced left to see a reassuring flash of red uniform coat. The Irish had made it across!