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 19^th 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.

“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!”