The King's Marauder (45 page)

“Aye?” the ugly old bugger responded as if wakened from utter boredom. The most he’d done in the meeting was scratch his whiskers.

“Do we spot any strange sail whilst the troops are ashore, I’ll fire two guns for a General Signal, and hoist Discontinue The Action,” Lewrie told him. “Captain Pomfret, do I make the signal, drop whatever you’re doing and get your troops back to the beach, instanter, for recovery. As soon as the troops are back aboard, Captain Hedgepeth, get under way and run Westerly as fast as you can. I will cover your withdrawal as best I can, even if you get back to Gibralter all alone.”

“Ehm, what if the Dons are upon us before my Marines, and your boat crews, are back aboard
Sapphire,
sir?” Lieutenant Keane asked in a worried tone. “Mean t’say, sir, our ship would be short-handed, and Roe and I would miss out on a good fight.”

“Hmm, little chance o’ that, I think,” Lewrie replied after a moment of thought. “With decent weather … else we’d not land … we should be able t’see their tops’ls over twelve miles away, and would have enough time to get everyone off the beach, at least an hour and a half before they were up within gun range. As I said, it’s only a remote possibility, but, it’s best if we didn’t leave anything to mere chance. Questions? Answers? Anybody want a sweet?” he japed.

There were a few niggling details, mostly answered by Captain Pomfret since they dealt with operations ashore, and a meek gripe from Midshipmen Hillhouse and Britton that, if there
was
a possibility of a sea-fight in the offing, was there any way for them to get back aboard
Sapphire
before it happened, the answer to which was “no”; they had a responsibility to speed the men of the 77th back aboard
Harmony,
then aid Captain Hedgepeth in driving his ship out of harm’s way as rapidly as she could, and if she was overtaken, organise the boat crews into as stout a resistance as possible.

The meeting broke up soon after that, and Lewrie and his two Marine officers took a boat back to
Sapphire.

“Beg pardon, sor, but, we’ll be goin’ out on another’un soon?” his Cox’n Liam Desmond asked as he handled the boat’s tiller.

“Good possibility, Desmond,” Lewrie cryptically muttered back.

“Wish we was goin’ ashore with th’ solgers, sor,” Furfy said. “I got me a taste for them cured Spanish hams, and sure, th’ Spanish must have better wine than wot we can buy here.”

“You go foraging, Furfy, and ye just might get taken by the Dons, like Major Hughes,” Lewrie said with a grin. “No ham or wine, in a Spanish prison hulk, not for the likes of us.”

“You’d be surprised by how raw and bad is the wine that we’ve run across,” Marine Lieutenant Roe told Furfy. “Just peasant swill.”

“Ah, well … someday,” Furfy said, with a disappointed sigh.

“Mister Keane, might you join me in my cabins once we’re back aboard?” Lewrie invited.

“Of course, sir,” Keane replied.

*   *   *

“What do you make of Captain Pomfret?” Lewrie asked once they were seated, and had glasses of cool tea in hand.

“Oh, he’s
miles
better than Major Hughes, sir!” Keane replied, with a smile on his face. “I gather he’s had far more experience in combat, too. And, having led a light company of skirmishers, he’s much more … flexible,” Keane related, searching for the right word for a second or so. “More … enthusiastic, too. In our latest exercises on the parade ground, he’s not only worked us in separate companies, one covering the advance or retirement of the next, but broke the companies down into platoons of eight or ten men so that part of each company can advance whilst the rest are firing. In our case, he’s drilled us as five files of ten men each, three delivering fire and two in motion, then two firing while three move. He said that he wished that he had a chance to get the troops used to skirmishing in pairs, too, sir … the rear-rank man covering his mate, and taking turns shooting, but, he thought it might be too much, too soon.”

“Sounds … ambitious,” Lewrie said, nodding. “Not that I know all that much about land-fighting, but it may be so novel an approach that the enemy would be confused, and overwhelmed by the speed with which it’s done. So, you’re satisfied, Mister Keane, in the tactics, and with Captain Pomfret?”

“Completely, so, sir,” Keane enthusiastically told him, and that was saying something from a man as stern and sobre as Keane.

“Very good, then,” Lewrie said, glad that the land side of any future landing seemed to be in good hands. “Weather allowing, we will embark the troops tomorrow afternoon, and sail at first light the day after. Thank you, Mister Keane, for your opinions.”

“Aye, sir,” Keane said, finishing his glass of tea and rising.

“More tea, sir?” Pettus asked once Keane had departed.

“No, not for now, Pettus,” Lewrie told him, moving over to the settee where he could sprawl and prop his feet on the tray table. He still had his doubts about striking at the incomplete battery at Cabo de Gata, worried that Mountjoy might be too eager to show his superiors in London that they were getting a good return on the money they’d advanced him, and that he’d chosen Cabo de Gata for lack of actionable information on a better one. Lewrie hoped that Mountjoy hadn’t opted for it out of quiet desperation! If
he’d
been in charge of selecting targets, he would have waited ’til that battery was complete, but … he wasn’t in charge; he was
still
a gun-dog to Secret Branch, even after all these years.

“Sit up, beg, sic ’em,” he sourly muttered. “
Good
boy!”

That drew Chalky from his contemplations of devouring the gulls that alit on the stern gallery’s rails. He came trotting with his tail up, mewing for attention and leapt into Lewrie’s lap for a minute or two of pets, before settling down for a slit-eyed nap, sprawled across Lewrie’s legs.

Lewrie considered going to his desk to pore over the operational details one more time, closely scan the best coastal chart that could be found with a magnifying glass looking for the unforseen reef, shoal, or obstruction, but he’d already done that a dozen times. He yawned, and considered a nap might be of better use. The next day, the weather allowing, he’d be busy with the last-minute preparations and the loading of troops, and at getting his ship to sea the next. Tonight was his last opportunity for a run ashore, and a man would need to be well-rested for a night with Maddalena.

Damme, I keep with her much longer, and I’ll have t’send to London for another two dozen o’ the Green Lantern’s very best cundums,
he mused, not trusting the cheaper ones smuggled cross The Lines from Catholic Spain, where the prevention of babies was harshly dis-approved, if not the risk of catching the Pox from a diseased doxy. Lewrie thought that the Spanish might even accept that risk as a scare tactic to keep their benighted people chaste!

Since that blabbed “dear to me”, and Maddalena’s declaration in kind, she had not
said
anything more upon that head, but she had become fonder, more affectionate, and even more passionate for a certainty, walking closer to him when they went about the town, reaching across restaurant tables to touch hands when they dined, and rewarded him with bright, adoring smiles. In her lodgings, she even
hummed
to herself, and her bird and her kitten, as if pleased with the entire world, and when in bed … frantically and often!

A nap, definitely,
Lewrie told himself;
Else a hot kiss and a cold breakfast’d like t’kill me!

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

“It seems we’ve created quite a scramble already, sir,” Captain Pomfret said as he peered ashore with his pocket telescope. “Might I borrow your glass, Captain Lewrie?”

“Certainly,” Lewrie said, handing over the much longer and much stronger day-glass as
Sapphire
and the transport closed the coast off Cabo de Gata under reduced sail.

“Oh, yes!” Pomfret said, with a laugh. “The semaphore tower is whirling away like a Turk Dervish, and the tent camp looks like an ant hill that some boys have kicked … all the workers are hitching or saddling up, and running inland.”

“
El diablo negro,
” Lt. Westcott said with a laugh, baring his teeth in a brief, harsh grin. “That’s what the Dons called us when we were taking and burning anything that would float, before all of the pieces of our force were assembled.”

“Their troops … they’re standing fast,” Pomfret pointed out, lowering the heavier telescope for a moment. “They’re forming before the battery walls, those dozen cavalry on their left. Lancers, by God! How useless!” he scoffed.

“They won’t be there long, after we open upon ’em,” Westcott said.

“Those lancers might be better placed above the beach,” Pomfret said, handing the day-glass back. “To disrupt our landing, though once we’re ashore in strength they’d have no choice but to retreat up the draw, and it’s too rough ground for them to re-form and charge us … their infantry would be more a threat to us.”

“You only see the one company reported to us?” Lewrie asked.

“So far, yes, sir,” Captain Pomfret replied, “and what passes as roads leading to the Cape are empty. We could see any re-enforcement coming for a long way off, the land’s so open.”

“Tell us when, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie called out to the Sailing Master, who, with a syndicate of older and more mathematically-inclined Midshipmen, had been taking the known heights of the headland to determine when
Sapphire
was roughly a mile off.

“Almost, sir,” Yelland called back.

“Seven fathom!” a leadsman in the fore chains shouted. “Seven fathom t’this line!”

“Almost, indeed,” Lt. Westcott muttered under his breath.

The
Harmony
transport stood at least half a mile off
Sapphire
’s starboard quarters, already beginning to fetch-to into the wind, with her six landing boats already being drawn up from towing to the chain platforms on either beam.

“Six fathom! Six fathom t’this line!”

“Now, sir!” Yelland called out.

“Alter course to Due East, Mister Westcott, and run out the larboard guns,” Lewrie ordered. “I’ll have the upper-deck twelves as the first broadside, and the lower-deck twenty-fours the second.”

“Aye, sir!”

Sapphire
’s bows had been pointed at the headland, their view from the quarterdeck partially obscured by the jibs. As the helm was put over, the up-thrust jib boom and bowsprit swung clear, the jibs sweeping right like the parting of a stage curtain to reveal the headland and the battery to one and all. The ship rumbled and thundered as gun-ports were swung up and away, and the great guns were hauled to the port sills, already loaded with solid iron shot. Sailing Due East, their target lay four points off the larboard bows, slowly inching to abeam. A couple of minutes more, and fire could be opened.

“Have ’em prime, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped, eager to be about it, even if he thought it could be a waste of gunpowder at that range. Below, gun-captains would be directing the crews to open the pans of their flintlock strikers to fill them with powder, then cock their locks, making sure that their trigger lines were slack. In the swab-water tubs between each gun, coils of slow-match sizzled, waiting to be wrapped round linstocks that would be applied to the touch-holes of the guns should the flintlock strikers fail, or a flint break at the wrong moment.

“Cast of the log!” Lewrie shouted, and a long minute later, Midshipman Fywell snatched the log line as it paid out and read the knots which had slipped through his fingers.

“Five and one-half knots, sir!” he piped back.

Lewrie looked aloft at the set of the sails, the direction at which the commissioning pendant lazily fluttered, and decided that it could be possible to get off three or four broadsides before the battery was too far aft of abeam for the guns to point in their narrow ports.

“As I told Mister Mountjoy, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie said, “it would be better to anchor a bomb vessel and pound the place with sea-mortars, with thirteen-inch explosive shells. We can only elevate our guns so high, and shootin’ at an incomplete battery wall is too iffy. Go high and over by yards, strike short and tear up the ground under the battery, and the chance of solid hits is damned poor. We might as well shoot at a thin ribbon at a mile’s range.”

“You believe the best we’ll accomplish will be to drive the enemy away, sir?” Pomfret said with a frown. “Hmm, I wonder what Mister Congreve’s rockets could do to the place.”

“Rockets, my God!” Lewrie hooted in sour mirth. “We tried ’em at Boulogne three years ago, and they weaved all over the place, and a couple of ’em came damned close t’hittin’ my ship!”

“They will need a lot more experimenting with before they are useful,” Lt. Westcott said with a shake of his head. “Our experience with them
did
put the wind up. Seared me out of a year’s growth!”

“Time, I think, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie decided at last, feeling a rising excitement even so. “You may open fire.”

“Aye, sir. By broadsides, fire!” Westcott shouted.

All eleven of the upper gun deck’s 12-pounders lashed out as one in a titanic crash and roar, and the larboard side was swathed in a sudden cloud of sour-reeking smoke.

“My word!” Pomfret gasped. “Impressive, even so!”

“Hope ye remembered t’stuff some candle wax in yer ears,” Lewrie snickered. A moment later and the heavier 24-pounders bellowed even louder, and the concussion was strong enough to make his lungs flutter. Despite his own precautions, Lewrie’s ears rang.

The ship rumbled and trembled as the guns of the larboard battery ran in to the stops of their breeching ropes, were re-loaded, and run out again, trundling tons of metal and gun carriages over the oak decks, with the squeal of wooden truck wheels added.

“Sounds like gastric distress,” Captain Pomfret japed with his smaller pocket telescope to his eye, again. “Egad, Captain Lewrie, I don’t think those soldiers are there any longer!”

Just before the guns delivered their second broadsides, Lewrie snatched a quick view of the headland and the battery, and saw that Pomfret was right; he could not see any Spanish casualties, but could espy a whole host of them running away, up towards the semaphore tower, in hopes that it might be out of range, or haring off along the rutted and dusty tracks to the East or West of the headland. Those lancers on their fine horses were galloping straight North into the foothills of the Sierra Alhamilla and the main road that led to Almeria, bent over their mounts’ necks and looking back in terror.