Authors: Dewey Lambdin
“Just as long as they can't see our fore-top, sir?” Spendlove inquired, full of good cheer. Nothing tremulous to
that
young man's tone!
“It's barely over the saddle, e'en so, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie chuckled. “And with no topmast standing?”
“Preparado . . . fuego!”
BLAM!
They turned to the next fall-of-shot. Three thousand eighty yards they were firing: twenty-seven seconds of flight time for a shell, with a quim-hair less than a six-inch fuse, and four drams shy of twenty pounds of powder down the chamber of the mortar.
Zélé
was shuddering like a kicked hound to each shot. In the fore-top that resulted in a shock, then a sway, judders so short and sharp it felt like the mast was going to be kicked out of its step far below on the keel.
“Twenty-five . . . twenty-six . . . twenty-sev . . . hit!” Spendlove said with glee, as he had every shot of the morning, hit
or
miss.
Brumm!
La Garde groaned, as a section of tumbled wall was blown out, massive blocks of masonry sent flying like so many rooks, scared from one gleaning to the next by a farmer's fowling piece. Dirty rags of smoke gushed out behind them, gunpowder-tan at first, then darkening as other things began to burn in the aftermath of a magazine strike to grow to a spreading, wind-flattened pillar of smoke worthy of a burning city.
And a shell splashed down behind
Zélé,
out to sea on her starboard side. But close enough to rock her when the fuse burned down underwater and made it explode as it sank to the rocky bottom.
“Found us,” Lewrie frowned. “Well, it only took the clowns over an hour, this time. That may have been their parting shot, though.”
Esquevarre kept on throwing a shell a minute at La Garde. Once more, though, there was a shell thrown backâtwo, in fact. One burst on the beach, scooping up a hail of gravel to add to its shattered iron cloud of shrapnel. Rocks and metal slivers pattered in a rain into the sea between the beach and the larboard bows. The second shell struck in the middle of the cove, equally between their floating battery and shore. And even on the fore-top, Lewrie and Spendlove were doused by spray.
“'Bout time to shift anchorage, Mister Spendlove. Lay below to the deck. Inform Mister Scott he is to ready the ship to hoist anchors, and for the comandante to secure his guns.”
“Aye, sir,” Spendlove replied crisply, then, agile as a monkey, took a stay in a hopeful, but sure, leap and slithered down, half sliding to the deck, hand-over-hand.
There were sharp noises, more bangs. For a moment, Lewrie thought that Fort Saint Margaret had opened fire with her sixand twelve-pounders, to delude the French; though with the harsh pounding they'd taken earlier, he rather doubted they'd be that charitable. There was a splash, about the bows.
The bows? he frowned. And no explosion? Solid-shot!
He looked east, toward Notre Dame de Bon Salut.
There! A wisp of powder smoke. It hadn't come from the arrow-tipped bluff above the beach, the Lord be praised, but farther east on the coast road, just where it began to crest the eastern hill, firing from defilade. Sure enough, another shot erupted from what he took to be at least an eight-pounder. And Fort Saint Margaret's shot moaned overhead in reply, to strike flinty, gravelly soil and leap and bound in deadly ricochet around it, puffing up clumps of dust at every touching.
“Damned right, we're shifting anchorage!” he groaned to himself. “We're getting out of here!” A second eight-pounder now opened alongside the first.
There was a moaning in the sky, the
skree
of a heavy shell on its way into the cove from La Garde. Lewrie stopped, with one hand on the standing-backstay, to see a second slow in its upward flight, to stand still in the air as a tiny black mote for a split second, then dash to invisibility again. Hadn't he heard, if you could
see
it, it was dead on, and . . . ?
With a sick premonition, he looked down to the deck, where Comandante Esquevarre was looking up as well, his face blanched, even under the grime of gun soot. Then the gun deck disappeared.
They struck
Zélé,
right in the mortar well. A shell must have been in the well, fixed and ready to be loaded. A powder charge, too, nearly twenty-pounds worth, free of its leathern cylinder, wrapped only in an easily ignited paper cartridge. There were two sharp explosions in one, almost atop each other, and a hail of splinters howled around him, blown upwards to spatter into the bottom timbers of the fighting-top!
Lewrie leaned back quickly, throwing himself flat, feeling wood jump beneath his belly, as smoke gushed up the lubber's hole, and the foremast shuddered and groaned. He started to rise, but fell flat at the second skree. That was the one he'd seen stopping, he hadn't even seen the first that took the well, he . . .
Another crash aft. No explosion. He turned his head to look and saw a star-shaped hole in the rear of the quarterdeck, right through the tough planking and beaming of what had been an upper gun deck . . . into the filling room! If it . . .
BLAM!
Timbers flew, heavy beams shattered, and wood splinters mixed with jagged iron splinters. More groanings and wood shrieks. And men crying out in pain and fear. The mizzenmast toppled forward, shorn off at its base, furled and gasketed sails smouldering, and rigging lines burning like slow match. Toppled forward by the force of the blast aft, draping itself over the larboard gangways, crushing them with its weight, that amputated trunk thrown forward of its stump!
Lewrie rose, saw that the standing-backstay was still firm, and slithered down to the deck through a fog of gunsmoke. And the smell of burning wood. Somewhere, they had a fire. Old and baked as their floating battery was, she'd go up like kindling, and soon.
“Where away?” he called to the first person he met, grabbing at the fellow's arm. The man howled with pain. That arm was cooked raw and black, still sizzling with embedded powder embers.
“Mon dieu, mon dieu!”
The man staggered away, half his clothes blown off, screaming with terror and the agony of his burns.
“Scott? Crillart?” Lewrie shouted above the din. “Spendlove?”
“Ici, mon capitaine,”
Crillart shouted back, emerging from the smoke. “Ze
chambre de fille
. . . zere is
très feu!
Ze shells stored . . .”
They both ducked as another tremendous blast erupted aft, this time with ragged, hungry flames licking upwards from the second great rent torn in the quarterdeck.
“Scott?” Lewrie demanded, taking de Crillart by both arms.
“I do not know,” de Crillart replied, shaky but determined.
“Get the men over the side, Charles. She'll blow sky-high, soon as the fire reaches the main magazine. I don't think we can save her.”
“Oui, Alain, elle est morte, pauvre Zélé. Alors, mes amis! Nous abandonnons! Anglais!
Ve abandon ship!
Espagnole, el barco abandonar!”
There were not many Spanish gunners left alive to obey that command. Lewrie coughed on the smoke, looking down into the ruin of the mortar well. Sergeant Huelva, the
aspirante,
Esquevarre and the match-men, the loaders . . . there was a ragged hole where the well had been, blown to the base of the orlop, and both mortars had crashed through it. Ruddy sparks glowed down there on the orlop, and greasy smoke coiled upwards. Of the men serving the mortars at the moment of immolation, there was little sign.
“Sir!” Bosun Porter shouted. He and Spendlove skidded to a stop near him. “We goin' over, sir?”
“Aye, we are,” Lewrie agreed quickly, trying to take a breath to steady himself. What he wanted most of all to do was jump howling over the side that very instant, anything counter to that wish could just be damned, and God help the trampled!
But he was the captain. If they went over the side in a panic, it would be even worse. And there was the fact that he couldn't swim a stroke! With more courage than he felt he'd ever deserved, he caught that smoky breath, and told his jibbering terror to wait a bit.
“Bosun, gather up oars, spare spars, hatch gratings, whatever is loose. Get it over the larboard side, in the lee, and lash it together. Mats of hammocks, between baulks of timber as floats. Hurry, we don't have much time. Mister Spendlove, gather some hands to help. Cony!” He bawled.
“'Ere, sir! I'm a comin'!” came a gladsome shout from somewhere forward. He looked singed as he came through the smoke, but Lewrie had never seen a cheerier sight.
“We have to leave her, Cony. We'll search for survivors first and get them over the larboard side.”
“Got Gracey an' Sadler, sir, an' a coupla t'others. Hoy, here be Lisney!”
“How's it below, Lisney?” Lewrie asked.
“Fires is burnin', sir. Aft, mostly,” Lisney coughed, hacking and spitting, blowing his nose on his fingers to clear soot from his nostrils and throat. “Transom's blowd clean out, sir. Ye kin see th' daylight through 'er. Floodin' bad.”
“So we sink before the orlop magazine catches fire?”
“They's fires on th' orlop 'neath us, now, sir,” Lisney cried between retches. “Nothin' big yet, but . . . after half, I reckon. Me'n th' gunner, an' 'is powder yeomen? Jus' come back. Too smoky t'see wot y'r doin'. 'Ey soaked th' made-up charges an' kegs good, long'z we 'ad water runnin' in th' 'ose, sir.”
“We have to go below,” Lewrie announced, chilling himself at his words, seeing the shiver of fear and awe reflected in his men, at what he was asking them to do. “There's gear below that'll float, lads. We need it. And, we have to check the magazine. Mr. Spend-love, inform Lieutenant Crillart where we're going, and have him round up as many as he can to assist the bosun. Then, see if you can find Lieutenant Scott. Right, men . . . after me. Let's go.” Bloody daft, I am, he told himself; daft as bats!
But they followed him below, that clutch of shuddering men; went staggering down the companionway ladders into smoky darkness to gather up stools and armfuls of tightly rolled hammocks, which might make temporary life buoys before they soaked through. They ripped down partitions and doors from warrant and mates' cabins, cut down the mess tables hung from the overheads, and handed them up, looted the unused carpenter's stores for baulks and planks of dry timber.
Lewrie forced himself to enter the magazine, crouched low under the coiling smoke, coughing his lungs out, even so. The felt screen in the doorway was still wet and cool, the door slimy with water. Farther aft, the wooden bulkheads were only slightly warm yet. He felt over a pile of paper cartridges, sickly slick and tacky with water. He worked in the darkâBittfield, their senior gunner's mate, had extinguished all the lanterns in the glassed-in light room which usually illuminated the magazine. Lewrie's feet slipped and slid in a slurry of wet gunpowder, gritty but soaked. He almost wet himself when he realised it. Normally, only felt or list slippers could be worn in the magazine to avoid sparks; no matter how careful the yeomen of the powder were, a small amount always spilled, and one scrape of shoe leather could set it off like a bomb! He heard trickling water.
God, yes! Forward there was a tin-lined water tank, used by the galley to fill the steep-tubs to simmer rations, and as a fire reserve. Bittfield had axed his way through the overhead planking and punctured it, hang the risk of a spark when his steel axehead had bitten into it. The tank was slowly emptying itself into the magazine, gurgling in shoe-heel deep. He felt the massive kegs in the dark. They were wet to the touch. Though Lewrie felt his “nutmegs” had shriveled up to the size of capers, he decided that the magazine would be safe just long enough for them to get away before it blew. There was double-banked timber on all sides, top and bottom, which would only smoulder and char . . . for awhile.
His hideous duty done, he quite happily fled.
“All clear, sir,” Lisney coughed and wheezed at him when he came forward to the companionway, where there was at least the hope of air and a little light. Lisney was fuming that he'd taken so long, that he could not flee himself until Lewrie did.
Can't say that I blame him, Alan thought.
“Hatchets,” Lewrie barked, between coughs. “Take the ladders, too. Break 'em loose, then we'll haul 'em up after us.”
“Aye, sir,” Lisney whined, impatient to be away. “Hoy, lads!”
It was a matter of seconds to break the ladders free, to scamper to the gun deck, then sling them upward and to the side. Lewrie followed them to the larboard side, the lee, and looked over. There was no more he could do. It was time to go.
“Half of 'em sir,” Spendlove wailed, standing on the fore-chain platform, clinging to taut stays. “They just lit out for the beach, and I couldn't stop them! Didn't wait to help, or . . .”
“It's alright, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie said, peeling off his uniform coat. “They can't help it.”
He swung a leg over the bulwarks and stepped down beside Spendlove, on the chain platform. It was only eight or so feet more to the water, but it looked one hellish-far drop. Terrified as he'd been down in the magazine, well . . . it didn't hold a candle to this!