The King - Dewey Lambdin

"Three fathom!"

"Hands to the braces! Helm alee! Wear ship to larboard!"

Culverin came about, across the eye of the wind, then farther, taking the wind across her stern at last, steering back down to the west with the beach on her starboard side and the wind on her larboard quarter.

Stella Maris had by then cut her cables and was underway, of a sorts, if one wanted to be charitable about it. She had paid off from her head-to-wind anchorage somehow, pivotting off her fallen mizzenmast, bumping against Poor Richard astern of her, and was aiming for the harbor entrance. Hands were laid out on her tops'l and course yards to get sail on her, but there was no wake about her yet; slow as she was, her ravaged rudder not yet getting a grip on the water.

"Aim right for her bowsprit," Lewrie said. "We'll round up as we close to fire broadsides, then point at her directly to make less of a target before the next is ready."

"She'll make a lot of leeway, sir," Murray warned. "If they ain't careful, they'll have her on the beach o' that western headland sure as Fate."

"Even more reason to stand off and shoot her to ribbons at a safe distance," Lewrie chuckled. "Once we strike three fathoms, back we go onto the wind. Let's take the first reef in the gaff sails on main and mizzen. We're much faster than she is now."

"Aye, sir."

Culverin came on like Doom, implacable and menacing for all her saucy handsomeness, her gunports open and carronades cranked forward ready for another broadside. Stella Maris began to slide across her bows as her crew got a stays'l and jibs set, and a fore-tops'l let fall at last to give her some steerage-way.

"The troops ashore have the palisade, sir," Murray pointed out. "An English flag's flyin' on that tower o' theirs."

"Three points of larboard helm, now, quartermaster. Stand by the starboard battery! Fire!" Lewrie shouted, oblivious to what was taking place on the island, almost lost in blood lust to finish off his part of the day.

The carronades roared out their challenge one at a time. Stella Maris quailed and cringed at each hit, shying away downwind. Culverin went back onto a westerly course, pointing her jibboom and bowsprit right at her until the guns were loaded once more. When they rounded up the next time, the range was just about 200 yards.

'Take your time with your aim, sirs!" Lewrie told his gunners.

Hogue brought down his arm, and his voice was lost in the howl of the guns. More shattered wreckage soared about her as the iron shot ripped her open. Masts quivered and shed blocks and cordage in a rain. The men at her helm were scythed away by a ball that struck on her quarterdeck bulwarks. A quarterdeck gun and its carriage took to the sky, tumbling over and over before splashing into the water to the downwind side!

Stella Maris, no longer under control, sagged down off to leeward, presenting her stern to them, listing noticeably to starboard where their first broadsides had punished her. Already, men were tossing over hatch-covers to escape another volley of shot.

"She'll go aground on the beach!" Lewrie shouted in triumph. "Cease fire! Cease fire! Mister Murray, round us up and let us get ready to anchor. About there, I should think. Springs on the cables."

Before they could lower their sails and drop their bower, the French ship struck. By then, she was well heeled over and sinking, low in the water. With the wind behind her, she hit the shoals and sand, the savage coral heads of the harbor's western shore, going at least 2 knots per hour. Not enough forward progress to tear her open, but enough to jam her onto the coral heads and pound and pound, so that she came apart slowly. Her masts stayed erect for a time before the strain on the larboard rope stays became too great and they popped, one at a time, to lower her masts yard by jerking yard until they groaned and split to topple into the sea.

They got Culverin anchored by bow and stern, springs on her cables so she could swing in a great arc to aim her guns at any ship attempting to enter the harbor. The gun crews were stood down, and Lewrie ordered the mainbrace to be spliced in sign of victory. He even took a mug of rum and water himself, suddenly reeling with exhaustion, with relief that it was over and that not a man-jack of his small crew had even been wounded. With the lack of solid fare in his belly. And with the shuddery weakness he felt at the conclusion of a battle.

"Sail ho!" the lookout called from aloft.

"Oh God, what next?" Lewrie asked the heavens. "Where away? What ship?" he shouted back.

"Lady Charlotte, sir! Bearin' fer the harbor mouth!" came the reply.

"Whew," Lewrie sighed, laughing at his own fear. "Whew!"

Chapter 7

"… Stella Maris wrecked on the shoals and her surviving crewmen made prisoner."

He wrote in his lieutenant's journal, which would also be a first draft for his report to Captain Ayscough when he came to the island, and the official account of the venture someday in far-off London and the Admiralty.

"We discovered storehouses ashore in the palisaded fortress."

"Hmm," he speculated. It wasn't exactly a fortress, now, was it? A bamboo log palisade with ship's planking for reinforcement, and built so amateurishly one could have hurled a large dog through it anywhere one wished. Still, "fortress" would read better back in official circles than "armed cattle pen." He dipped his goose-quill pen in ink and continued, more than a little tongue-in-cheek.

"The goods amassed were considerable, both gen'l trade goods to an estimated value of Ј50,000, quantities of Gangetic Opium Silver rendered into 1 oz. bars (Chinese taels) to a value of Ј200,000. Also discovered were stands of arms (French Mod. 1763 St. Etienne Arsenal muskets with all accoutrements) cutlasses pole arms (boarding pikes espontoons), powder shot, six 4-pdr. French naval carriage guns, powder shot Ditto twelve 9-pdr cannon un-mounted, Do."

He leaned back and took a sip of a rather good Bordeaux that had traveled exceptionally well all the way from its point of origin to this dry and rocky Hell halfway around the world, and outlined to his superiors what a clever little fellow he had been.

How he had dismounted some of Lady Charlotte's twelve-pounders and sited a three-gun battery on the point of the western peninsula to protect the harbor they now occupied. How they had finished the observation tower in the "fort" to an advantageous height, giving them a thirty-mile radius to espy the arrival of their foes, or the relief ships. How the captured guns with carriages had been sited to scour the harbor should any ship get inside, and the crew of the Lady Charlotte had been "commandeered" (he preferred that word to "press-ganged") into serving as gunners.

Stella Maris stripped of all her fittings and useful articles, her artillery and powder that had not gotten soaked employed in further defensive positions atop the high ground of both headlands before she was burned to the waterline and the ribs and carcass towed off the shoals to sink, out of sight, in deeper water.

"Stella Maris provided material with which to refit Poor Richard. This American Whaler was restored to her Capt. one Lemuel Prynge such of her crew as survived their seizure cruel enforced Servitude, their rightful Cargo put back aboard Poor Richard allowed to sail for Manila, the closest Port where they could hope to meet up with other Yankee vessels a snr. Owner Master bearing dipl. title of Consul, with whom Capt. Prynge assured me the most strenuous Representations against the French Govt. would be presented."

He concluded by listing the very few dead and wounded among the Native Infantry, the utter lack of hurt to his ship or his men, the great number of French dead and wounded, the names of the Americans who had died or been hurt by capture or captivity and strong praise for those of his warrants and seamen he thought deserving.

"What else?" he muttered, leaning back in the rattan chair that creaked and gave most alarmingly as he did so. The table, the very walls of this shore house were of the same material, fetched from God knew where. Surely not from anything that grew on the island, that was for certain. Even the thatch of the roof was of palm fronds, and fairly fresh, too. So it had been a recent import to Spratly Island. He thought about putting down his suspicions that the Illana pirates had already come to visit, but decided against it. A lieutenant's journal was for wind, tide and sea-states, for weather or ship's routine. For a different slant on events-not for idle musings.

He closed the ink-pot, sluiced his pen-nib off in a cup of water and blew on the pages he had written to dry them. A slow process, that. Mr. Brainard had promised cooler climes at Spratly, but if this was in anyway dryer, or cooler than Bencoolen, it was a matter of degree only.

They had had several spells of freshening weather as the winds shifted more sou'easterly to the seasonal norms of the summer Monsoons. Wind, lashings of rain, cool, blustery half-gales that so far had not swelled to ship-threatening storms. The cisterns and rock-pools had filled with water, and Culverin and Lady Charlotte had caught hundreds of gallons of fresh water in canvas chutes. Enough to succor the men and animals brought to the island, enough to support all the livestock running wild or penned up for slaughter the French had brought.

Frankly, they had enough livestock to start a well-run estate, and that was just the imported animals. What ran wild on the island could keep one awake at night with their miniature stampedes and alarums. Everyone had been eating well ever since they arrived.

He finally got the ink dry enough to roll up the pages and tie them with a hank of thin rope, then went out to check on his latest project. Rather, his father's latest project, for which he was giving up a few crew members.

No ship could take being fired upon with heated shot. Once a red-hot iron ball lodged in a ship's timbers, the tinder-dry wood took fire like fat pine-shavings. Lt. Col. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby had suggested a battery for that purpose, and Lewrie had concurred eagerly. Said battery was now installed above the "fortress," halfway up the rocky slopes of the central hill. He toiled up the rough path to the battery to take a look at it.

Two twelve-pounders sat in a hollow partially dug into the slope, screened from view by a shielding wall of boulders laid loose against each other and some dry brush. There were two wide embrasures through which they could fire, and cover the entire harbor. And, being about sixty feet higher than the beach, gained an advantage in range over a ship-mounted artillery piece that might try to return fire. There was a magazine dug into the back slope, and off to one side where it never could threaten the powder supply, was a rock forge where iron cannon balls could be heated before being carried to the battery and loaded down the muzzles of the guns.

Firewood should have been a problem, except that Stella Marts had provided tons of scrap lumber, and enough bar-iron to make the cradle-sized carrying tools for heated shot. Poor Richard had also gladly sold several barrels of whale oil with which to ignite the forge. And Alan had an idea lurking in the back of his mind about the rest of the whale oil.