The King - Dewey Lambdin

Chapter 6

We're going to be damned early," Lewrie groused. The winds out of the east were beginning to blow more freshly, and Culverin had the bitt in her teeth, cleaving the early morning at a pace he did not like. "Hands to the braces! Ease her sheets!"

They winged out the big gaff sails until they luffed and fluttered, then hauled them back in until the luffing eased, but Culverin was still making a rapid five knots. Too fast! They'd arrive in the middle of the narrow harbor channel not a quarter of an hour past five a.m.

"Lower the outer flying jibs!" Lewrie commanded. It made little difference, as if their little warship had a will of her own! She slowed by perhaps half a knot, and the shore loomed closer.

"First reefs in the mains'ls, sir?" Hogue suggested.

Lewrie took a look at the chart once more, gnawing on the inner side of his lips in frustration and worry. Last of the ebb, still at least five fathoms in the entrance channel, he told himself. Narrow entrance, but widening once we're in. Calmer waters once inside, and the eastern peninsula will partially block the winds; we'd have to shake out our reefs once we're in harbor, and we'll be too busy for that!

And gun-batteries, he almost gasped! Something else I didn't consider, but only a fool would not have a battery on the tip of the western peninsula, to guard the entrance. Speed's the thing. Get past them before they could get off more than a couple of broadsides.

"No, Mister Hogue. Stand on as we are," he ordered. "I think a certain amount of dash is necessary this morning. Leadsmen to the chains now. You take the gun deck."

"Aye, sir."

"Sail ho!" the lookout called from aloft, making Lewrie feel like his bladder would explode. "T the larboard beam!"

Lewrie seized his telescope from the binnacle, raced to the larboard mizzen shrouds and scaled them until he was about twenty feet above the quarterdeck. Thank God!

It was only the Lady Charlotte, standing sou'east from her night anchorage after disembarking the troops, fulfilling her role as a possible threat. She was deliberately being placed too far down to leeward to make the harbor entrance against the prevailing wind. But at least she was obeying his command even in part.

It was getting light now. Light enough to see details on the island, now not two miles off Culverin's bows. Suddenly, Lewrie was glad the wind had freshened. Now came the time when the plan lay at its most exposed. Troops possibly in position, artillery ready for firing, perhaps…. and Culverin and another strange ship racing to enter harbor. Let's get it over with, he thought eagerly.

He descended to the deck and stowed his telescope away, trying to show that great calm which was expected of naval officers, the calm which he had never quite achieved before. Things always seemed too urgent and desperate to him at moments like this to walk instead of run, to keep a gambler's face instead of cheering his head off or cursing Fate.

"And a half, two!" a leadsmen screeched from the fo'c'sle.

Lewrie could not stifle a yelp of alarm. Where in hell was that shoal sprung from? Was it charted? Were they about to wreck this fine little ship? He bent to the chart and sighed heavily. It was marked. An outer reef wall that lay tumbled like those the Romans had built in the far north of England centuries before. Some island-to-be, an outer harbor that might have existed long before a taifun's fury had shattered it.

Coral heads and breakers to starboard, two cables off, thank Christ!

"And a half, two!" the other leadsman shouted. Culverin's keel was now skating across razor-sharp coral with about six feet to spare. If the chart did not lie, please God, he prayed.

"Three!" the first leadsman yelled. 'Three fathom!"

It sounded like a winter wind, to hear all the people on the quarterdeck sigh out in blissful relief at the same time, and Culverin's captain the loudest of all.

"Six fathom at low tide from here on to the entrance," Alan told them, once he had got his breath back. "We'll see breakers to the west on the shoals off the peninsula, and a long line of breakers to east'r'd. The entrance is a cable-and-a-half wide, gentlemen. And the main channel will be dead in the center, right, quartermaster?"

"Aye, sir," the man replied, chewing vigorously on a plug of tobacco.

"Hands to the sheets. Harden up, Mister Murray."

"Aye, sir."

One mile to go, with Culverin gaining speed once more. Dull grey light of false dawn. Twelve minutes past five in the morning. Culverin sailing almost flat on her bottom on a reach, a soldier's wind across her beam. The shore nearing, the breakers crashing and foaming above the sound of her wake, the rush of ocean round her cutwater and down her sides. Foaming up in low water-dunes on either side of her bows, sucking low amidships, hummocking under her narrower stern-quarters before spreading out into tumbled briny lace in her train.

"Artillery!" Murray gasped.

Yes. Over the sounds of Culverin as she sprinted, over the hiss and roar of the breakers, there came sharp little flat bangs. Tiny tongues of flame on the base of the western peninsula lit up the pre-dawn. The 19th Native Infantry had seen Culverin rushing at the entrance like a cavalry charge, and had opened fire!

"A point to windward, quartermaster, put yer helm down!" Lewrie commanded, eyeing the disturbed water of the channel. Breakers abeam, the tip of the peninsula to the west and the jumbled sucking shoals even with the main-mast. Culverin staggered as she met the breakers, cocked her bows high as she was for a moment checked by the mass of water, then surged onward, surfing atop a great growler of a wave with spray flying over the quarterdeck, and the long, curved tiller bar almost alive and kicking with two quartermasters throwing their strength on it to keep her from broaching sideways onto the next wave astern.

Then she was through, into calmer waters!

"Hoist the colors!" Lewrie shouted. "Let these bastard Frogs know who they're dealing with!"

The battery of guns on the peninsula fired once more, and they could see tiny little white-and-red ants rushing forward to the attack from the jumbled rocks of the headland.

Squeal of a metal sheave as the Navy ensign soared up the gaff on the taffrail and cracked in the wind. And the sun rose. A tropic sun that exploded over the grey horizon like a bomb, as blood-red as roses!

"Larboard battery, stand by. Open the gunports and run out!"

There was no battery of guns on the western peninsula. Some men running along the strand, back toward the palisaded encampment, or back to the safety of their ship before all Hell broke loose, but no guns to threaten his vessel!

"Harden up! Helm down a point more!"

Hogue was chanting instructions to the gun-captains as they cranked in elevation with the rear set-screws, as they wheeled their long recoil slide carriages, pivotting on the mounting bolt at each gunport, the rear iron wheels rumbling as the carron-ades were aimed as far forward in the ports as they would bear.

"We'll give yon brig the first taste, Mister Hogue!" Lewrie shouted forward through a brass speaking-trumpet. "Fire as you bear!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

A long minute's wait as Culverin ghosted forward, more slowly now that she was winded by the eastern headlands, the wind snaking its way across the breakers where it found no resistance, creating a little river of air more from the southeast than the east.

"One more point to windward," Lewrie said. "Close-haul her."

"Stand by!" Hogue shouted. "As you bear… fire!"

Five terrifically loud explosions, spaced evenly as a fired salute. One splash close aboard Poor Richard, two strikes on her lower wales, making her rock and splatter hull-shaped rings about herself. Two more strikes that struck her upper works, twenty-four-pounder solid shot creating whirling clouds of dust and debris, and shattered planks flying as high as her main-course yard to splash down alongside!

"And again!" Lewrie shouted.

More abeam this time instead of aiming far forward. Now the range was under a cable and they couldn't miss. Poor Richard heeled over and shivered with each hit, her masts whipping across the sky and shedding rigging. There seemed to be no resistance aboard her.

"Cease fire!" Lewrie ordered. "Aim forward for the next ship, and stand by!"

Stella Maris was a different breed of cat entirely. Her ports were opening. Men swarmed aloft to loose canvas, and axe-heads glinted in the sunlight as they tried to cut her bow and stern cables to escape.

A ranging shot howled over the quarterdeck from one of her after-most gunports. And other gunports were opening!

"Luff up, quartermaster!" Lewrie snapped. With the tiller hard over, Culverin turned parallel to Stella Mans to bring her guns into bearing, her sails now pointed straight into the wind and flapping in thunderous disarray.

"As you bear, fire!" Hogue obeyed.

"Goddamn my eyes!" Murray howled with glee. "Oh, bloody lovely!"

The trunk of Stella Mans' mizzenmast was sheared in two, and the upper portion of the mast came down like a giant tree to drape in the water over her stern, ripping all the standing rigging and running rigging to shreds aloft. Her transom and rudder post shattered into a swelling maelstrom of broken timbers and planks. Part of her upper bulwark on her quarterdeck disappeared, and star-shaped holes burst into existence in her hull.

"Again!" Lewrie raved. "Hit the bitch again!" He went to the larboard side, climbed up on the bulwarks, gripping the mizzen stays, and spread his arms wide as Culverin's guns belched fire once more.

"Eat it, Froggies!" he screamed across at them. "See how you like the taste of that!"

"Another minute an' we'll be in irons, captain!" Murray said from below him.

"Helm up to starboard. Keep a way on her, slow as you like, but keep a way on her."

"Larboard battery… together… fire!" Hogue screamed as the ketch bore off a little, getting some wind in her sails once more to skirt down toward the French ship.

It was a blow right under the heart! Stella Marts shook like she had an ague as the weight of that broadside lashed her. Pieces of her whined through the air, making Lewrie jump down from his vantage point and go back to the binnacle in the middle of the quarterdeck.

"Close and board her, sir?" Murray asked.

"No. Mister Hogue, cease fire! Hands to the sheets!" Lewrie called. "Stand by to come about! Stations for stays! We'll make too much leeway if we continue on this tack, Mister Murray. Better we sail up to windward on the larboard tack, then wear ship and come back to give her the starboard battery with the wind up our stern. No reason to board her and get our people cut up when we can lay off and shoot her to pieces, if it takes all morning."

Within half a cable of the stricken Stella Mans, Culverin showed her her stern as she tacked across the wind to run south at the wall of breakers. But long before she got anywhere near them, they tacked her again, and drove her toward the eastern shore, the leadsmen chanting out the depth once again.