“Mister Lewrie!” the second young midshipman yelled, dashing to his side.
“Holy hell, will you stop pestering me?”
“Mister Railsford orders you prepare to repel boarders!”
“Run out!” Tulley screeched, and the hands tailed on the tackles to draw their pieces across the deck with the rumble of a cattle stampede as the small wooden wheels of the trucks squealed and drummed.
“Gun-captains to remain, tackle-men and loaders take arms and prepare to repel boarders!” Alan cried. “Tulley, give 'em the broadside and then bring your hands to join me. Let's go, men!”
“Prick yer cartridges ⦠prime yer guns ⦔ Tulley droned on, as the excess hands dug into the weapons tubs for cutlasses and boarding axes, stripped the pikes from the beckets around the bases of the masts, and flung open the arms chests for heavy (and usually inaccurate) pistols. Once more Alan was at a disadvantage, for he did not have any of his pistols with him. He took a tomahawk-sized boarding axe for his off-hand and stuck it into his breeches, unwilling to try his luck with a Sea Pattern pistol again.
“Up to the gangway, quickly now!”
“Take yer aim ⦠stand by ⦔ Tulley called as they scrambled up to the larboard bulwark behind the Marines, who were still volleying into the foe. Sedge dashed past him on his way forward to join the youthful Burney to protect the fo'c'sle. Alan
looked back to see Railsford bringing all the afterguard and mizzen mast crew to the break of the quarterdeck to defend the after portion of the ship. Musket bayonets glinted dully from those hands who had gotten a chance to break out the long-arms. Pike heads bristled like medieval infantry ranks, and cutlasses fanned the air as men loosened their arms for the bloody work to come. The French lined their own rails, striped-jerseyed sailors and men in check shirts much like British seamen, naval infantry in blue coats with red facings, with here and there an officer in blue coat edged with gold oak-leaf lace and epaulettes, with red waist-coats.
“Fire!” Tulley finally shouted, and everyone ducked below the bulwarks and nettings as the guns erupted so loudly, avoiding the rush of hot gases and the clouds of smoke, and the whining, ricocheting bits of grape-shot and canisters of musket balls as each piece was turned into a scatter-gun.
Alan stood back up just in time to see Railsford leaping onto the after bulwarks and waving his small-sword in the air. “Boarders!” he screamed. “Away boarders!”
With a lusty roar,
Desperate
's crew went up onto the bulwarks themselves. Grapnels had been thrown by the French, and British implements flew across to complete lashing the hulls together. Nettings came down as they surged across, leaping the churning mill-race of white water between the ships.
There wasn't much opposition. That final broadside fired at the highest angle of a naval carriage gun had shattered the upper-works of
Capricieuse,
ripping the rails to knee height and scything boarders into mangled meat. Alan landed atop the torso of a French marine who had lost belly and intestines, his feet slipping in entrails and excrement as he staggered to the inner side of the riddled gangway and fetched up on the rope railing overlooking the waist of the gun deck.
A weak volley of bullets fanned the air and he jerked his head back quickly. There was resistance forward, but Sedge and Lieutenant Peck of the Marines were dealing with that. There was a large party of Marines on the frigate's quarterdeck, but nothing much between, the waist having been stripped of men, and those men mostly were now dead or dying, the few still on their feet tossing down their weapons and raising their hands in surrender, too shocked by the sudden carnage and boarding to wish to continue fighting.
“Take the larboard gangway!” Alan shouted, pointing with his hanger at a knot of men still armed on the other side of the ship.
He dashed out onto one of the wide cross-deck beams that spanned the waist and reached the far side. A man confronted him with a cutlass, but before he could engage, a hole sprang up in his chest and he tumbled to the deck. Alan whirled to engage a second, but a boarding axe sprouted from that man's shoulder, thrown by one of his men, and that foe fell down as well, screaming in agony. The rest threw up their hands quickly and congregated into a submissive knot by the main chains.
“Stap me, that wuz easy,” a Marine corporal said at Alan's side. “Jus' 'bout wot ye'd expect from Frogs, ah reckon, sir.”
“Disarm the buggers before they get their wits back, corporal,” Alan shrugged, sheathing his still unbloodied sword. “Herd 'em up forward with that other lot and don't forget to pat 'em down for knives and such.” The corporal's eyes lit up at that order, for it would be a good excuse to loot the prisoners of what little value they carried on their persons, regulations be damned.
“Ah 'pects ye're right, sir, ah'll atten' ta that direckly.”
Alan strode aft to the quarterdeck where Railsford seemed to be in complete charge. The first lieutenant had a bloody gash on his head from which gore still oozed, but his blade was properly slimed with the life's blood of a foe, and his face was split open in a magnificent and triumphant grin. There were French dead laying about like rabbits underfoot all over the quarterdeck, over which he paced unconcernedly.
“I give you joy of this day, Mister Lewrie!” he shouted.
“And to you, sir,” Alan replied, studiously trying to avoid the sight of so many men reduced to bloody offal.
“God, what a victory!” Railsford went on. “An old tub such as
Desperate
taking a 5th Rate with twenty-eight guns. How's your French?”
“Bloody awful, sir,” Alan told him, beginning to realize just what an improbable thing they had just pulled off.
“Who'd a thought such a thing possible?” Railsford enthused at some length. “Of course, yon thirty-two helped them make up their mind to strike. But ours is the principal effort, and there's glory enough to share.”
Alan noted a British frigate of thirty-two guns falling down-wind to them rapidly from the main anchorage, possibly the ship he had spotted before fire had been exchanged. Lashed as she was to
Desperate, Capricieuse
would have been made a prize even if she had emerged victorious over their puny efforts.
“Here, I can't make out a word this queer-nabs is trying to say, not half of it, anyway,” Railsford said, gesturing casually
with his sword to a knot of French officers, and a suitably senior man jumped back with a start as the tip of that bloody blade got within scratching distance of his nose. “I thought you might help interpret.”
“Pardon a mois, monsieurs, parle vous l'Anglais?” he asked hopefully, doffing his hat to the startled senior officer who seemed to be in command, but that worthy merely pinched his nostrils and went into a positive flood of rapid Frog, and stepped back, snapping his fingers to summon a junior officer.
“Monsieurs, permittez-vous, ici l'troisième lieutenant de Marine Royale ⦠'ow you say, three officeur? I 'ave en peu English,” the junior officer volunteered.
“Bloody good,” Railsford beamed.
“Charles Auguste Baron de Crillart, à votre servis. Notre capitaine la frégate
Capricieuse,
Jules Marquis de Rosset.” The Frenchman handled the introductions with all of them bowing in
congé
and doffing their cocked hats. “My capitaine 'e say 'e is 'ave tres honneur to be striking to you, monsieurs.”
In sign of their victory, a Blue Ensign was hoisted on a mainmast signal halyard, with the white and gold Bourbon banner displayed below it, and the crews of both British ships raised a great cheer. The French captain screwed his face up into a grimace worthy of a half-frozen mastiff and unclipped his small-sword from his belt frog to hand it over with a polished gesture.
With de Crillart translating as best he could, arrangements were made for quartering of prisoners, the care of the many French wounded, and the Christian disposal of the dead. Railsford had to protest that their captain should not have to surrender his sword, since he had put up such a spirited resistance, and after more florid speeches, this privilege was extended to the surviving commission officers as well. De Rosset then bowed his way to the ladders leading to his quarters as though leaving the presence of royalty where one never gave the monarch the sight of a human back, and went below, probably to see what he had been looted of while honor was being satisfied.
“Thank God that's over,” Railsford said softly as they turned to go back aboard
Desperate.
“The prize isn't that damaged, but our poor ship was knocked about pretty badly. Get me a report from the carpenter, and then see who's left in charge of the various departments.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Desperate
had indeed been knocked about; she looked as though she had been eaten at by giant rats, her bulwarks jagged
and her decks ruptured and sprung. Nettings, rigging and sails hung about her like a funeral shroud, and those spars and sails still aloft had been shot through so completely a brisk breeze would have brought them down in a total ruin. The sound of chain-pumps clanking made a mournful tempo as streams of flood-water gushed from her. Men picked about her decks to find the wounded or the dead, and the sailmaker and his crew were already at work on the quarterdeck sewing up shrouds for burials.
A quick trip below into the holds assured Alan that their ship would not sink, though the repairs and patches had not stopped the leaks but had only slowed them to a manageable in-flow.
“We'll be at the pumps all the way ta Antigua, sir, but we've got a chance, iffen we could fother a patch er two,” “Chips” told him.
That seemed good encouragement, which lasted only until Lewrie got to the surgery on the lower decks, and Dome gave him the bad news.
“Mister Monk has passed over,” Dome began, in between suffering seamen as the leather cover over the midshipmen's chests was sluiced clean of blood and tom flesh with a bucket of seawater. “The loss of blood was too great, I'm afraid. And our captain was struck down in his moment of greatest triumph as well.”
“Dead?” Alan asked, ready to spew at the sights and smells and sounds of the surgery. Could we be lucky enough to be rid of him? he thought.
“No, praise a merciful God, merely splintered, and if suppuration does not set in, he stands a fair chance for recovery. Hoist him up here,” Dome directed as a moaning body was laid out on the table. “That arm shall have to come off. Who is he, one of ours?”
“A French seaman, I believe,” Cheatham the youngish purser informed him after looking at the pile of clothing on the deck that had been cut off the unfortunate. Cheatham took a swig of rum from a cup, to steady his own nerves, then offered it to the Frenchman's lips for him to suck on as an anodyne.
“Wondered where he was,” Alan muttered, shivering with chill at the sight of the man's rivened arm, and the instruments that Dome was removing from a bucket of bloody water for reuse.
“Who?”
“Treghues,” Alan said.
“Non, non, mon dieu, non!” the Frenchman screamed as the weary loblolly boys took hold of him to keep him still, and Dome lifted up that arm and quickly flensed the flesh away above the major wounds, not five inches below the shoulder. Cauterizing irons sizzled to stop the flow of blood from opened arteries and veins, and the air was putrid with the reek of scorched flesh, and the savage rasp of a bone saw.
“Oh, Jesus,” Alan said, turning away, ready to faint, ready to “cast his accounts” on the slimy deck.
“Fifteen seconds, I make it,” Dome grunted, pleased with himself as the amputated limb dropped to the deck. “It is a point of pleasure to my professional skills that I never cause undue suffering by taking long, once a course of action has been found. Sutures, quickly now, while he is unconscious. Hogan, more cotton bast for this.”
Alan staggered away from the table, almost tripping on the legs of the many wounded who groaned and cried out in agony.
“We win, sor?” someone asked.
“Aye, yes we did,” Alan nodded, almost unable to speak.
“'Tis Judkin, sir, is the captain arright?” the captain's servant asked, his face almost muffled with bast and bandages, with only part of his mouth free.
“I am told he shall live, Judkin.”
“'At's right good, sir, 'e's a good master ta me. 'Ere, Mister Lewrie, 'tis Mister Avery over here,” Judkin piped, full of good cheer. “Mister Avery, sir, Mister Lewrie's come a'callin' on ya.”
Avery had been stripped bare and covered with a scrap of sail, and what flesh was exposed had been scorched by the explosion of that burst gun, cooked the color of a well-done steak, oozing red.
“Oh, Jesus,” Alan reiterated, kneeling down by his friend as David Avery gasped air through his open mouth. “David? Hear me?”
Avery seemed to be trying to whisper; his lips moved, but no words could be made out. His eyes opened for a moment, bloodshot as cherries floating in coal sludge, staring blankly at the deckhead.