A King's Commander (51 page)

“Mister Crewe?” Lewrie shouted. “Fetch Mister Rahl from the magazine, and try your eye with one of the foc's'le carronades. Upwind of her, so she won't tack inshore on us!”

“Aye, sir!”

“Wind's veerin' ahead, sir!” Spenser told him from the wheel. “'Ave t' ease her a point.”

“Very well, Mister Spenser.” Lewrie chuckled. “That'll keep us honest. And from running ashore on the island, bows-on.”

“'At it will, sir!” Spenser snickered, easing his spokes.

Rahl marched almost stiff-backed like a Grenadier guard to the forecastle, still in his list slippers and powder yeoman's apron, keenly aware of the crew's eyes on him. He fiddled and fussed, weighing a charge, turning a ball to check how perfectly round it was. Tinkered with the elevation screw, the compressors.

“Bloody hell!” Knolles groaned as he stood back at last, with the firing lanyard taut, awaiting the perfect moment.

Sailing “a point free,” Rahl had a good portion of gun arcs to work with, instead of firing right over, or through, the fore-stays or jibs. Up
Jester
rose a trifle, then sagged bow-downward; then up once more, poised and . . .

Boom!
As Rahl jerked the lanyard. He stood ramrod straight to spot the fall-of-shot, one hand shading his brow. A pillar of ricochet spray leapt into the sky, tall and so prettily symmetrical it resembled the finest white goose feather. Within a short pistol shot of the tartane's
windward side! His fellow gun captains gave Rahl a lusty cheer as their Chase veered off the wind as if recoiling from that strike, to duck down to dead-ahead of
Jester
's
bows, where no more round-shot could be hurled at her. But that forced her to leeward, just a little farther from shore and safety.

“Well shot, Mister Rahl!” Lewrie shouted. “Man the starboard . . . the lee carronade! Spenser, back on the wind, close-hauled, quickly.”

As Rahl and the forecastle gunners readied the other eighteen-pounder,
Jester
clawed back up to windward a full point, right on the razor-edge of luffing, to put the tartane
almost two points alee of her. To claw
Jester
inshore of the Chase!

Boom!
Another shot soared out, raising a second feather of spray; again, close-aboard the tartane
,
which ducked back up to wind-ward, this time to escape, weaving an ess-shaped wake before
Jester
's
bows.
Boom!
went the larboard carronade once the tartane
had ducked upwind enough.

“Ja!”
Rahl shouted in triumph.
“Eine schön Gott-damn hit!”

I'm surrounded by fools! Choundas raged; incompetents! Filthy-arsed mongrel defectives! Goddamned . . .
farmers,
who haven't a clue to the sea! Forced to remain silent, forced to depend on a leering cretin, who should have
known
a night wind off the land would fade, and stranded them too far from shore. Failed to tack once they saw that “Bloody” ship and didn't seem to know that the heights would muffle what breeze there was. Chances for an escape looked rather bleak at the moment, but they had one shot left—to tack at once and run inshore, get into shallows where the “Bloodies” couldn't go. Brave their guns, and flee.

The impact of the shot took him by surprise, muffled in his boat cloak on the weather deck below the high-pinked quarterdeck. Cold made his ravaged leg throb with agony, but he was about to fight it back, as he'd done for years, mount the quarterdeck and take charge. The aching delayed him a fateful second as he rose to stand, to mount the ladder.

The tartane
shuddered, jerked and rolled as if she'd run aground. Men were screaming, even men on the weather deck around him who weren't even in the line of fire! There was a frightful smash of shattered timber, the parroty
Rrwawrk!
as the taffrail and upper stern transom, and a portion of the larboard rails were ripped away in pieces, and whickerings as foot-long wood splinters of the transom and quarterdeck planks whirled in the air. Choundas forced himself up the first step, to peer over at nose height as the lateen above his head was quilled with splinters—and spattered with gore.

Serves you right, he sneered! That boastful Araby-looking nasty of a captain had been slain, along with the helmsman on the tiller, and the other two on the quarterdeck had been blown off their feet.

“Silence!” he boomed, almost crying out at each step as he went to the quarterdeck. “Listen to me! I am captain now, and I will save you. Do what I say and you will live. Lose your heads, and you all are dead men! As dead as your fool of a captain is!”

That stopped them in their tracks, as he took hold of the tiller sweep and began to force it leeward again, to hold them close-hauled on the wind.

“Trim us in to beat, then hoist the rowboat over the side. The lee side, where the ‘Bloody' ship cannot see it,” Choundas roared. He used his free hand to sweep back his boat cloak to reveal the pistols in his waist belt, the hilt of his sword. “Once around the island, we are out of its lee. There will be wind. There we will tack, and run into shore. Then we will get in the boat and row in, with this ship as our shield. They will not see us doing this, until it is too late. Do you understand me?
Bien. Très bien.
Now, do it!”

Out of desperation, with no other option they could agree to in their fear of capture and death, they obeyed. Choundas forced himself to smile, which made him look malevolent, but competent enough to save them. Though some made the sign against the “evil eye” as they crossed themselves for luck. Feral, brutally ugly . . . but he looked like a real officer who knew what he was doing; they obeyed him.

Too bad I didn't have Hainaut with me, Choundas thought, leaning his hip against the long tiller bar; with four pistols, I'd have killed that idiot, and done this hours ago!

H
elm
a'weather, Mister Spenser,” Lewrie was forced to say. “Ease us two points off the wind.” The shore of the island was coming up fast, and he'd have to bear away to avoid its shoals. The tartane
was only a half mile ahead of him now, but she was able to shave closer inshore . . . still hard on the wind, and brush
Jester
off, recapturing the windward advantage. He'd have to cede her the inshore route.

“Mister Rahl!” he shouted through cupped hands. “Grapeshot and scrap, to damage her rigging! Cripple her, sir!”

Rahl tried, firing at extreme elevation, but it was too far for grapeshot, and
Jester
had no star-shot, bar-shot, or chain-shot for the carronades that could whirl across the half-mile gap. Rahl could hit her, evident by the multiple froths of small hailstorms in the waters around her, but it was too light to do crippling damage. And she wasn't ducking high and low anymore, either, but was being unflinchingly steered as close to the wind's edge as she could be. And beyond the island, there was a narrow channel that led to a deep inlet, winding back west, the tall headland at the western edge of Vado Bay. There was a village at either place, a beach below the headland where fishing boats landed, where the pounding of surf had created a gravelly shingle. More rocky would be the narrow channel, with few places to land safely.

“Herr Kapitan!”
Rahl announced in a parade-ground bark. “I go back to der solit-shot,
ja,
zir?”

“Aye, Mister Rahl!” Lewrie shouted back.

“We've almost got him,” Mister Peel said. “If he's aboard, after all, that is, Captain Lewrie.”

“Thankee, Mister Peel, for reminding me what fools we might yet be,” Lewrie groaned, most happily unaware of Peel's existence for the last few hours.

“I borrowed Lieutenant Knolles's telescope, sir,” Peel told him.

“The last few minutes, there's been a fellow steering her who's wearing some sort of uniform. It could be that's part of a deliberate sham but I rather hope not.”

“No more'n me, I assure you, Mister Peel.” Lewrie yawned, badly in need of more coffee, though the galley fires had been extinguished, once they'd opened fire. “Oh, well shot, sir! Serve her another!”

Rahl's round-shot from the larboard carronade had slammed into the sea so close-aboard the tartane
that she reeled leeward, her masts shaking and her deck heeled almost a full forty-five degrees for a moment!

But she came back upright, slowed by the drag of the knockdown but sailing doggedly on. Not turning for the narrow, rocky channel!

“Right, she's for the beach on the headland!” Lewrie exulted as the island came abeam, and he could see the wrinkly cat's paws stirring the waters beyond it, a fluke spiraling off the headland. “The town, Mister Peel. Know it? Who holds it now?”

“Genoese troops, I
think,
sir. Don't think the Frogs have come over the heights this near Vado yet.” Peel perked up. “Inland might be a different story, but . . .”

“Deck, there! Chase is tacking!”

“Damn him, damn him!” Lewrie groaned.
Jester
had to sail more than half a mile farther before she had enough clearance from the coast to come about! The tartane
was just a little east of the tip of the headland, and could come back to nor'west by north and run in.

“Wind's
backin',
sir!” Spenser exclaimed, feeding spokes alee to keep
Jester
on the wind's edge, as he'd been ordered.

“He's tacked right into a shift!” Knolles screeched. “Headed,
again,
by God, sir!”

“Stand on, and ready the larboard battery,” Lewrie ordered. The tartane
had run into an invisible wall, almost coming to a full stop as she met the wind change head-on, forced to bear away more and more westerly to find the proper angle, fall away at a huge angle even beyond
that
to get some speed up before she could come back to a beat. The wind was now out of the nor'west, and
Jester
could turn up nor'east to run in much closer to the headland and the beach. And the struggling tartane
.

Chases were like that sometimes, Lewrie realized; plod astern of a ship for hours, never fetching her a yard closer, but all along, gaining slowly. And suddenly, one's ship seemed to leap forward, and there she was, close enough for point-blank broadsides, as if someone had conjured the Chase to reappear within spitting distance. Within the blink of an eye, there she was, not a quarter-mile off, just back to speed but set too far west of the now-visible beach to ground upon it, and forced to tack again to the nor'east, slowing her even more!

“They've a boat alongside, sir!” Knolles shouted as he lowered his glass. “Starboard side!”

“It's him!” Peel cried. “Looks like Choundas, at any rate.” Lewrie raised his own glass. Yes, so close now, he could fetch that ant-figure on her quarterdeck to almost fill the ocular, head-to-toe, he could recognize his foe of old, in the red breeches and waistcoat, the gold-laced blue coat and boat cloak of a French Navy officer!

“Mister Crewe, run out the larboard battery, and open fire!”

It was rushed, too rushed, with the range closing so quickly it made accurate aim impossible, going from a quarter-mile to two hundred yards in a trice. Round-shot went whizzing far overhead, splashed too far short, and too steep to ricochet. Only a few balls struck the tartane
.
And missing the rowboat completely! Men were tumbling down into it, Choundas among them, just as it was cast off to wallow astern, the tartane
bumping and grinding alongside as it fell away, with no one at the helm. Falling down toward
Jester,
and just big enough to present a danger of collision! And mask her fire!

“Shift fire to the rowboat, Mister Crewe!” Lewrie howled, hot for murder. “Cony, hands forrud to fend that damn' thing off! Mister Spenser, your eye, sir, to match course with her. Where's Andrews?”

“Heah, sah,” his cox'n answered, leaving his lee side carronade. “Go below and fetch me my Ferguson rifle, the one with the screw breech,” Lewrie snapped. “There's a shot pouch, cartouche box, and a powder flask stowed in my smaller sea chest in the bed space. Before that bastard rows out of range, hurry!”

Crewe got off another ragged broadside, rushed again, but a lot more accurate. Feathers of spray flayed the sea around the rowing boat, short, wide, a little over, so close-aboard they skipped once, caromed over the oarsmen to Second Graze near the headland's shoals. But nary a bit of harm could they do!

“Luck of the Devil, that'un,” Peel spat. “Uncanny, ain't it.” “Gotta fall off, sir!” Spenser announced, as the tartane
came careening in toward their bows.
Jester
was doing about six knots and the tartane
no more than four, her close-trimmed lateen yards strained and her sails flat-bellied the way her crew had left them, scudding to a beam-reach by then, heeled over by the unnatural press of wind.

“Cease fire, Mister Crewe!” Lewrie groaned in defeat. The guns were masked as
Jester
had to turn away from the coast, out of range of even his rifled Ferguson he'd kept since his escape from Yorktown. It came up from his cabins with Andrews, just a half minute too late!

Gun crews leapt from the waist to scramble up on the gang-way as the tartane
fell alongside. There was a shiver and scrape, a thud, as the hulls met. But Spenser and Brauer had judged it to a nicety, laid
Jester
parallel to the collision, and falling off the wind had slowed her to almost a match.

“He's going to get away,” Lewrie griped. “Again!”

“Sir, you recall the orders you received,” Peel snapped, stony and crisply military again, and fearfully impatient to complete Mister Twigg's bidding to him. “To render me every and all assistance to take or kill Captain Choundas.”

“Christ, yes, Mister Peel, but . . .”

“Can't count on the Genoese holding him, sir,” Peel rapped out. “Can't count on him runnin' into an Austrian cavalry patrol, and being took, sir. The village may have horses. He could ride west, till he's in the French lines. You must land me at once, sir. Me, and any men of your crew who're horsemen, to pursue him. This minute, sir!”

“Sailors who can ride, my God . . .” Lewrie sighed, looking about the deck. Knolles, being a country gentleman, had his hand up. So did his clerk, Mountjoy. Cony could, but he couldn't spare the bosun.

“This minute, sir!” Peel demanded. “There's not a jot o' time to waste!”

“Mister Knolles, you are in command, sir,” Lewrie snapped, taking the Ferguson and its accoutrements from Andrews. “Mister Mountjoy, I hope you ride better than you scribble?”

“Country hunts and steeplechasing, sir.” Mountjoy swore. “Andrews, fetch my pistols. Both pair, for me and Mister Mountjoy,” Lewrie decided. “My hanger, and the Frog smallsword. Bring 'em to the larboard gangway, midships. Cony, grapnels! Keep the tartane
alongside for a minute! You have money to rent or buy mounts, Mister Peel?”

“Some, sir.”

“Got me purse on me, sir,” Buchanon offered. “'Bout twenty or so pound, an' change.”

“God bless you, Mister Buchanon.” Lewrie smiled. “Mister Knolles, you will stand out to sea to clear the headland, then enter Vado Bay to report to Captain Nelson. Hyde should be along, sooner or later, you should recover him and his crew, and wait our return. Well, let's
go then. 'Board the tartane
.
She's trimmed for a beat, and that'll take us ashore.

“Spare hands, sir?” Knolles asked.

“Not for what I have to do, no, Mister Knolles.” Lewrie smiled grimly, trotting to the gangway entry port to scramble down the battens to the main chains. “God speed, sir. And don't muck up my ship.”

“God speed to you, too, sir,” Knolles replied, suddenly feeling a lot older than his years.