The French Admiral Read online

  “Forrester, take the stern,” Railsford said in a whisper as they drifted closer together. “Cut her stern cable and guard her watch.”

  “Aye, sir,” Forrester piped.

  “Silence, damn you! Avery, do you take the starboard main chains and go for the wheel. I shall go to larboard and send my people aloft to set sail. Lewrie, do you take the fo’c’s’le and cut her bow cables. Do not any of you load a musket or pistol until you are on deck. Use cold steel if you have to put anyone down, and try to do it quietly.”

  “Give way, gently,” Lewrie ordered after the other boats began to drift away far enough to re-employ the oars. He put the tiller bar over to steer alongside the French ship in Railsford’s tiny wake. They both ducked under the jutting jib-boom and bowsprit, ghosted to a crawl in a tight turn just under the rails of the beakhead, eyeing the loose bights of line from the brailed up spritsail as a possible way up.

  “Hook on,” Alan mouthed almost silently. “Boat your oars.”

  Railsford’s boat faded out of view into the night and Alan waited, not sure exactly for what. The sound of Railsford scrambling up the side? Or would that be too late? A response from the sleeping French?

  “Let’s go,” he whispered finally, after the tension began to grow on him to almost unbearable proportion. His men sprang into action, going up hand over hand by the bight of line to the beakhead rails, using the bulge of the gunwale termination as a footstep. Alan had no choice but to try and follow clumsily. He was weighed down with a pair of those awfully inaccurate Sea Pattern pistols in his jacket pockets, a cutlass on a baldric over his shoulder, and his dirk hung by a belt frog from his waistband. If I fall in, I’ll sink like a stone, he told himself fearfully.

  He stepped on the bow of the jolly boat, hauled himself upward with both hands on the bight of spritsail brace until he could hook one claw over the lowest beakhead rail, which was slimy with night damp and the excreta left behind by French sailors. He almost lost his grip as he used the rails for a backward-leaning ladder, but there was a horny hand on his wrist and a great tug that pulled him up and over the rails with ease to the grated platform atop the cutwater.

  “Las’ shit that turd’ll drop, sir,” a harsh voice whispered to him with great glee, indicating the Frenchman who was sprawled ungainly like a sack of scrap canvas at his feet. The man had his slop trousers down by his ankles and had obviously had his throat most efficiently and silently cut as he sat musing at his ease.

  “Jesus!” Alan gaped in awe, feeling like a very green and unblooded cod’s-head at the sight, which he had not expected. “Any alarm yet?”

  “No, sir. Caulkin’ like lumber, sir.”

  “Load your musket,” Alan ordered. “Watch my back while I load my pistols.”

  He had already tamped down powder, ball, and wad into the barrels but had left the pans empty and the hammers full down. Fumbling for powder flask around his neck, he snapped open the frizzens of first one gun and then the next to prime his pistols, dribbling powder into the pans. He could not see what he was doing, but hoped that he was being accidentally liberal. He shut the frizzens, drew the hammers back to half-cock, and stuffed them into his jacket pockets once more. He drew his cutlass, looped the short lanyard around his wrist and touched the man with him on the shoulder to let him know that he was ready.

  They advanced to the outer doors to the bulkhead roundhouses where petty officers took their ease when called by nature. There was no one there. Passing through the bulkhead, they emerged on the fo’c’s’le. In the faint light of the fo’c’s’le belfry lantern, they could see that their men had preceded them and had slit the throats of several Frenchmen sleeping on deck in preference to the close air below decks. Their blood gleamed wet and black in the gloom.

  “We’ve got her,” the man said in triumph, baring his teeth in a wide grin and turning to beam at Lewrie, who wasn’t sure of anything at that moment.

  Then they heard a shout from aft, where Forrester’s people should be ascending to the poop deck to take charge of the stream anchor cable and the officers’ sleeping quarters, where the small arms would be kept.

  “Qui va là?” the shout came.

  “Pont de la gard!” a voice called back full of confidence.

  “Oh, you unspeakable, ignorant ass!” Alan hissed.

  “Merde, alors, c’est l’Anglais!” someone in command screamed. “Aux armes!”

  A pistol discharged and somewhere in the dark a man who had been the target—French or English, it was impossible to tell—yelped in agony as he was hit, followed by a large splash.

  “At ’em, Desperates!” Railsford bellowed over the sudden alarm and bustle.

  “Get that anchor cable cut and set one of their jibs,” Alan told the man with him. “Bow party to me. Head aft by the starboard gangway.” He knew that Railsford would be on the larboard side, Avery aft by the main-chains to starboard and trying to take the wheel from the awakened French watch party, and most in need of assistance. There were Frenchmen everywhere, as though they had stirred up a hornet’s nest, as men who had been asleep on deck in hammocks or bedding on deck rose up and took in hand what weapons they could.

  There was a hammock slung before Lewrie, and a man trying to exit the cocoonlike sack. Before he could get one foot on deck, Alan swung his cutlass with all his force and took the man across the neck and chest, bringing forth a howl of pain as the man tumbled out of his hammock to the deck to twitch and thrash in his death throes.

  Several sparks gleamed in the night, then came the ragged crash of muskets or pistols and more cries of anguish. A marine loomed up in front of Lewrie, bayonet lowered and blood in his eyes, howling some wordless shout as he drove for his ribs.

  “English, dammit!” Alan cried, forced to step aside from the glittering bayonet point, and the musket shoved between his arm and his side as he ended up close enough to count the marine’s remaining teeth. “Stop that!”

  “Oh, ’scuse me, Mister Lewrie, sir!” the marine said, once more in possession of his faculties, spinning about on his heel and plunging aft into the fight once more without a backward glance, leaving Alan shaking with the closeness and stupidity of his near-death.

  “Alan,” Avery called, coming out of the night with his uniform facings flashing. “Are you hurt?”

  “Scared so bad I wouldn’t trust mine own arse with a fart,” Alan said. “That damned bullock almost knackered me.”

  “Well, this is turning into a bloody shambles!” Avery spat, wiping his cutlass blade on the swinging hammock that had lately contained a man.

  There was a deep boom off in the night, a cannon fired as an alarm to wake the other ships to the danger of raiders in their midst. Lights began to appear on the distant decks as crews came up on deck to peer into the night to see where the danger was.

  For the moment, anyway, the fighting was over, for the small French civilian merchant crew had surrendered, and those few who had been below were being chivvied on deck at sword point. Very few people really had been killed or hurt. They were not paid to take the risks of naval seamen and had caved in almost before they had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes, the only resistance being the anchor watch around the wheel and binnacle and those mates that had gotten on deck from the officers’ cabins aft.

  “She’s empty,” Railsford told them as he came up on the gangways. “They’ve already unloaded her. Looks like she was carrying troops. Nothing of value. Who was that idiot who said pont of the guard?”

  “Somebody aft, sir,” Avery said.

  “Forrester, I’ll be bound,” Railsford said. “Only a perfect little Latin student could cling to pontis instead of bateau. ”

  “Ship or boat was classis, sir,” Avery advised. “Pontis was bridge.”

  “And fuck you too, Avery,” Railsford growled, going aft to the men by the wheel.

  “If the truth be known, Avery,” Alan drawled, wiping and sheathing his own cutlass, “classis was fleet; navis was ship, and bo
at would be a linter, cymba, scapha or, in rare usages, navicula. ”

  “Do tell,” Avery snapped.

  “And to compound the error, pons was the singular, pontis the plural . . .” Alan went on, as though nothing had happened of any consequence to their chances for prize-money, and escape.

  “Yes, Mr. Dorne,” Avery cried, exasperated. He walked away.

  “Cables’re free!” The shout came from the fo’c’s’le.

  “Avery, Lewrie,” Railsford called. “Attend to getting the ship under way!”

  The foredeck party had already gotten a jib hoisted and had let fly the spritsail under the jib-boom to get a forward way on their prize so the rudder could get a bite and allow them steerage-way. Alan led three men aloft onto the fore-mast to cut loose the harbor gaskets from the foretops’l for more speed. Before they could even gain the foretop, however, the hull drummed to several cannon balls fired from the ships to their lee.

  “Warship off the starboard bow, sir!” the foredeck party called.

  There was something out there, something not too big— another of those damned cutters, perhaps, or a sloop of war.

  “We’re in the quag now, sir,” one of the hands told Lewrie as they gathered in the foretop ready to scuttle out the tops’l footropes.

  Small as the enemy might be, they would have artillery which could punch through the frail scantlings of a merchantman, and a crew of trained men ready to board and retake the ship from them.

  By God, I’m beginning to wonder if we can do anything right any more, Alan cursed to himself.

  “Burn her!” Railsford announced. “Lash the wheel and set her alight. By God, they’ll not have her!”

  “Back to the deck,” Alan ordered. “Daniels, secure our jolly boat!”

  “Aye, sir!” the man replied. “We’re gonna be needin’ it.”

  They scrambled back down to the deck and began to gather up anything they could find that was flammable, which on a ship was considerable. Within minutes they had a fine little fire going below decks in the waist, made from the straw bedding the soldiers had used before being disembarked.

  “Lash the wheel!” Railsford yelled. “Make sure we leave no one behind, now. Into the boats and abandon ship!”

  “Anyone hurt from our party?” Lewrie asked his most senior hand by the larboard foremast chains.

  “All here, sir,” the petty officer informed him. “Even the marines is here!”

  “Into the boat, then, hurry,” Alan said, looking over his shoulder at how the fire had spread already and was beginning to leap above the gangways to gnaw at the rigging and the base of the masts. He was last to leave the deck after looking around for anyone he recognized still standing or left wounded and discarded in a dark corner. Before he spun away, the French warship had already opened fire with her bow-chasers, and one iron ball slammed hard into the merchantman’s hull and flung broken wood everywhere, making him duck and scramble over the side. With a slashed fore-brace for a manrope, he lowered himself close to the waiting jolly boat and jumped the last few feet, landing roughly on some of his men who were struggling to ship their oars, making them all curse and grumble.

  “Shove off,” he ordered, stumbling over their legs and feet to his place at the tiller. “Out oars, there! Give way all!”

  As long as they were in the lee of the burning prize, they were safe from the warship’s attentions, but that situation could not last long.

  The ship was now being pounded to matchwood by the French sloop of war, and was well alight but still under way heading west on the making tide and the slight wind for the rest of the anchorage, while their hope of rescue lay east. Within a moment they would lie exposed on the open waters to the guns of the sloop of war, and would be hopelessly vulnerable targets. Taking Railsford’s course as a fine example, Alan steered for the darkness to the south and the black shore beyond the other ships.

  “Gawd, they got guts, sir,” Daniels said in awe, pointing aft. When Alan looked over his shoulder he could see that the sloop of war, a fine brig-rigged ship of at least fourteen guns, had come about to run down on the burning merchantman, either to nudge her out of the way or put a crew aboard to put her helm over to steer her away from the rest of the threatened transports.

  “May they roast in hell for their pains,” Alan said, but it did give them a chance to escape, which Railsford took at once, waving an arm and pointing them back east toward where Desperate was anchored, away from the transports and the possible guard boats that would be gathering to intercept them.

  “Row like Satan was after you!” Alan encouraged. “Put your backs into it like you never did before.”

  They tried, he gave them credit for that, but it was a hard row. The tide was against them and splash and dip as they might, sending the boat surging forward with each stroke, they seemed to make no progress at all. He was almost despairing of them keeping up such a furious pace when a gun discharged somewhere and sent at least a six-pound ball humming over them, close enough to wind them with its passage and splash a cable off.

  “Who goes there?” an English voice called into the night.

  “Desperate!” Railsford shouted back. “Ahoy, the ship!”

  “Come alongside!”

  “Thank Christ,” Alan breathed. “Easy all.”

  Desperate had raised her anchors at the first sign of alarm to come to their rescue, since nearly a full third of her crew was off on the raid. She loomed out of the dark, a hard shadow still showing no lights and let her boats nuzzle up to her by her chainwales and entry ports even as she continued to gather way.

  “Quickly, now!” Treghues’s voice could be heard urging them from the quarterdeck. “Lead the boats astern after the people are on deck. Mister Monk, lay her nor’-nor’-west. Mister Toliver, hands to the braces to wear ship. Mister Gwynn, we can use some of your gunners on the sheets and the braces.”

  Life on the Desperate could be drab and dull, the food could approach swill at times and Treghues could be an unpredictable martinet, but every man jack was exceedingly delighted to get back on board.

  “I shall expect your report in the morning, Mister Rails-ford,” the captain said as the ship turned onto her new course and the confusion of overworked hands and frightened arrivals began to sort themselves out to their duty stations. “What a muddle!”

  Lewrie went to the larboard gangway for a moment before joining his gunners in the waist. The French prize that had almost been theirs was now turned crabwise and though still burning fiercely was no longer any danger to her consorts, some of which had cut their cables in their eagerness to avoid being set on fire. However, the sloop of war was heading their way.

  There were other warships to seaward of them, but of no immediate concern, and by the light of the fire they could espy no ship of any strength that could beat up to windward on the light breeze against that tide to reach them before dawn.

  “Mister Gwynn, draw grape from the larboard battery and reload with solid shot,” Railsford called from aft. “We shall be having company soon and must give him a proper greeting.”

  Alan dropped down into the waist and supervised his gunners as the bags of langridge and grape were wormed from the barrels and tossed aside.

  Gun captains rolled nine-pounder balls around the deck to find the most perfectly cast that would fly true when fired, then had them rammed down the muzzles and tamped down. Arms raised in the air to indicate each gun’s readiness.

  “Run out yer guns,” Gwynn ordered, and the crews hauled on the side tackles to trundle their charges across the slightly canted deck to the port sills where the carriages thumped against the hull. Side tackle was laid out for smooth recoil with no snags; train tackles were overhauled as well.

  “Prime yer guns.” Gun captains reached down with prick-ers to poke holes through the serge cartridge bags. They inserted powder-filled goose quills into the touchholes and stood by with their slow matches.

  “Wots ’e got, Mister Lewrie?”
the nearest gun captain asked.

  “Six or seven guns per broadside, six-pounders most like; that’s what they felt like when they were shooting at the prize,” he answered.

  “Wuz she worth much, sir?” another man asked.

  “Empty. Usual Frog trash—filth and no cargo.”

  To get close enough to make his lighter guns do damage, the French commander had to beat up to them close-hauled on the starboard tack. Since Desperate was still making for the mouth of the York River, that meant that the French sloop would spend long minutes almost bows on to them, hoping for a convergence. But this would leave her open for raking fire on her own bow. And when the range was about two cables, and the target barely recognizable in the darkness now that the burning prize had burned out or sunk, this was what Desperate proceeded to give her.

  “As you bear . . . fire!”

  One at a time, starting with the larboard carronade on the fo’c’s’le, the guns barked harshly, flinging themselves backwards to the center line and stabbing long amber flames into the night. The hands threw themselves on their artillery, sponging out the barrels, inserting new cartridges, ramming down fresh shot, and running out, as well drilled as clever little German clockwork toys freshly wound up.

  The French sloop of war replied, aiming high as was their practice, but the angle of convergence was getting more and more acute and her guns could not bear, so most of the storm passed overhead and to sternward on the first broadside.

  He’ll not cut us off, Alan decided, seeing the way his own ship was headreaching on the Frenchman; he’ll have to haul his wind or pass astern of us, and we’ll get clean away.

  The shadow of the enemy vessel did lengthen as she turned, seeing that she was not fast enough to intercept Desperate. But as she did so, she got off another broadside, and this one brought all her guns to bear. There was a loud crash from aloft, and things began to rain down.