The French Admiral Page 24

  For his part, Alan had the use of a bedroom in a small house within one hundred yards of his battery on the rampart, shared with an officer with Symonds’s marines from the Charon; the house itself full of officers sleeping three to a bed, on the floors and furniture, even bedding down on top of, and under, the dining table. They were all young and junior and had access to lots of spirits and personal stores they shared together for their informal mess. Alan could return to a dry bed, Cony’s ministrations with his uniform and kit, a glass of hock, rhenish, red wine, brandy, corn whiskey, or rum toddy. There was cider, some captured local beer, and plenty of food and condiments to make it palatable as long as their caches held out. There was a privy in which he could take his ease (which was rapidly filling up, though, with so many people using it). There was an outhouse with a large wooden tub where Lewrie could take an occasional bath in warm water when the stewards and orderlies were not using it to wash clothes.

  So he waited like the others, rising for the rare alarums and diversions as a battery would fire on the enemy digging a parallel down south-east, or light off a rocket at night, sure that a party of infiltrators had appeared, but for a desperate war, it was a chore to even keep interested in it most of the time.

  WHEEE-BLAM!

  Alan jerked involuntarily in his sleep, savoring the most lifelike dream of fondling and un-dressing Lucy Beauman. Her father was at the door, crying out for his daughter’s virginity and slamming his fists on the door. WHEEE-BULAMM!

  “Sufferin’ Christ!” his bedmate said, rolling off the high mattress and taking refuge under the bed frame with the chamber pot. The other officer who shared their bed had already gone out the window. “Lewrie!”

  “Umm?” Alan mazed sleepily. It had been so warm and snug, bundled in between the other officers, each wrapped in a good blanket with a quilt spread over all three of them. WHEEEE-BUBLAMMM!!

  This made the entire house shudder, and Alan came awake in the afterglow of the explosion of a large-caliber mortar shell that felt as though it had struck in the next room.

  “What the hell is it?” Alan said testily. He was never at his best just awakened, and the dream had been so damned good.

  “Well, it sounds mighty like the end of the world,” his bunkmate said from below him. WHEE-BLAM! A strike farther off, but still close enough to blow in the drapes and stir the air in the room.

  “Who opened the fucking window?” Alan said. “It’s cold in here.”

  “Gad, you’re a cool ’un,” the marine told him.

  “Holy shit on a biscuit,” Alan blurted, suddenly realising what was happening. “Where are you?”

  “Down here,” came the muffled reply.

  Alan tried to disentangle himself from his bedclothes as the WHEE of another descending shell could be heard in the distance, rapidly drawing closer with a menacing wail. He finally gave it up and rolled out of bed like a human caterpillar and thumped heavily to the floor to wriggle under the bed as well, just as there was another apocalyptic BLAM!

  The house shuddered once more, and the sound of running feet was making the floor bounce like a drumhead. Voices shouted what sounded like arrant nonsense in a cacophony of questions, statements, yells of terror, and demands for silence and order. Trumpets brayed in the camp, the Highlanders got their bagpipes working and filled the air with the hideous screech of war marches, and drummer boys beat loud but shaky rolls to call the troops to arms, as if they had not considered a shelling enough incentive to head for the ramparts and the guns.

  “Mister Lewrie, sir?” Cony called, bursting into the room. There was another shriek in the air as one more shell descended, and Cony found room under the bed for himself as well. “You alright, sir?”

  “Bloody grand, Cony,” Alan muttered as the shell struck close enough to raise the dirt and dust puppies around them. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  He dressed in the dark, Cony passing him waistcoat, shoes, neckcloth, coat, and hat, one item at a time, like a conjurer who knew exactly where the chosen card was all the time. His pistols were shoved into his hands, and while he was stuffing them into his breeches pockets, Cony was hanging his dirk on the frog of his waistband.

  “Yer hat, Mister Lewrie,” Cony said in the darkness.

  “Seen my orderly?” the marine officer asked.

  “No, sir, I ain’t,” Cony replied, flinging open the door to the dining room and parlor. “They’s the flask in yer coattail pocket, sir, an’ I’ll see to yer breakfast later, if ya don’t mind, Mister Lewrie.”

  “Not at all.” Alan headed out into the darkness. Well, it was not entire darkness. There were enough fires burning to light up the encampment where a fused shell from a high-angle piece such as a mortar or howitzer had set fire to the hay stands for the remaining animals, or shattered a house and set it alight.

  “God!” Alan gaped at the night sky. There was some low cloud that night turning pale gray on the bottom from the fires already set and from the bright bursts of flame of the guns in the artillery parks and redoubts that had finally begun the bombardment of Yorktown. Hot amber meteors soared up from the countryside and howled across the sky under those clouds to arc down and burst with horrendous roars and great stinking clouds of expended gunpowder. It was an awful sight, of such complete and stunning novelty that he stopped short and just stared for the longest time. Solid shot could almost be seen as quick black streaks that crossed the eye before they could be recognized and followed. Heated shot moaned in all colors, depending on the bravery of the gunners who had rolled it down their muzzles; either blue-hot or yellow-amber, like a half-made horseshoe on a forge, but sometimes a dull red from those careful souls who did not want to deform the shot in the barrels or set the propellant charges off with the heat of the projectiles before the crews could stand back for safety.

  Fused shells, those filled with powder and designed to burst and rend anything near their impact with shattered iron balls, came flicking in slowly, their fuses glowing like tiny fireflies as they descended to the earth to thud into the ground, hiss malevolently, then blow up and raise a gout of clay and rock. Sometimes the fuses were cut too short and the ball exploded before it hit the ground, scattering death about it below the burst, and no one in a trench could be safe from such a blast.

  The guns worked over the north end of the town for a while, then shifted further south, allowing Cony and Lewrie to run for the safety of the trench beside their gun platforms.

  “Everyone well, Knatchbull?” Alan asked his senior gunner. He had to take hold of the man’s shoulder and almost shout into his ear. Either Knatchbull had been concussed or deafened or frightened out of his wits.

  “Two samboes gone, sir,” Knatchbull finally replied. “Shell damn near got ’em all back there. Daniels had ta go ta the surgeons. Hit with splinters, sir.”

  Daniels. Alan remembered that he had been in his boat crew the night they had burned the French transport. “Is he much hurt?”

  “In the lungs, sir.”

  So much for Daniels, Alan thought grimly. A lung wound was sure death within days . . . perhaps even hours, if Daniels was fortunate. He could get drunk one last time on the surgeon’s rum and go quickly.

  “Nothing on the river?”

  “Nothin’, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull said with a shake of his shaggy head. “They kin keep this up fer days afore tryin’ us direck.”

  “Then what’s all the fuss about, then?” Alan said with a smile he did not feel. He went along the parapet to his gunners, those keeping a watch with muskets and those clustered by the nine-pounders, clapping a shoulder here and there, telling them to rest easy and keep their heads down until they heard something, assuring them no one in their right minds would try a frontal attack, not tonight at any rate.

  Their own guns were firing in response, flinging shot and shell into those artillery parks out in the darkness, measuring the fall of shot by the glows of their own fuses, though it seemed that Cornwallis’s batteries w
ere not as numerous, or not firing in such a hasty volume as the enemy’s. It would make sense, Alan realized, to conserve the powder and round shot they had in the fortifications until they could find a good target, for they could not be resupplied until their relief force arrived, and the French had most likely brought tons of the stuff and could get more from the 36 or so warships in the bay.

  There was nothing else to do but wait some more, no longer in so much suspense, but wait in terror and trepidation for the next burst of shell. Narrow ramparts were hard to hit with mortars and howitzers firing blind at night at high angle, so except for that one lucky shot (which was all it would take) they would stew and fret at every wailing infernal engine that the enemy fired in their general direction, squat down when it sounded close, and stand up and grin foolishly after it had struck away from them. Had it not been for the screaming, it would have been almost a game that they were watching.

  Hideously wounded soldiers were screaming their lives away back in the town in the surgeries and dressing stations. Horses and mules were screaming in terror as they dashed back and forth through the fortification’s enclosures, dashing from one end of their pens to another, or were out in the open, galloping away from each new sound and bloom of dirt and smoke, only to be hewn down by the shells and then bleed to death, with broken spines, broken legs, spurting wounds in innocent, dumb bodies, entrails hobbling them as they tried to run; always screaming and neighing in fright, wondering why their masters did not make the noises and the lights stop, why no one could make their screaming stop.

  At first light Alan called his gunners to quarters to stand by their guns and parapets. He kept his blanket over his shoulders to ward off the early morning chill and joined them from the trench in which he had tried to rest during the night.

  From their eastern wall he could see the Star Redoubt, not much pummeled and still flying a French flag, and the huge battery further west. With a glass he could see that the positions on the Gloucester side had gotten the treatment, too, but not as heavily. Those positions had not changed much.

  The town, though, had suffered from the shelling, and crushed buildings showed like newly missing teeth from the order of the day before. The fires had burned out and a haze of sour smoke lay over the entire encampment, thick with the stench of charred wood and expended gunpowder.

  Going on tour along the north and west walls, Alan could see that there was nothing to their fronts. The redans guarding the road into town were still there, as were the ramparts, battered but still whole, and the fields before their positions were empty of threat. Nothing stirred in the ravines of the creek, and not a bird fluttered in the woods.

  “Knatchbull, see to breakfast,” he said upon returning.

  “We’re a might short, sir,” Knatchbull told him. “Nought but gruel an’ some biscuit, an’ this ain’t no Banyan Day, Mister Lewrie.”

  “Nothing left from supper?”

  “Nossir, they ain’t.” Knatchbull was almost accusatory.

  “Send two men back for meat, then. Enough for the slaves, too.”

  “Ain’t none o’ ours, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull complained.

  “By God, they stood by as scared as the rest of us, and if they serve powder and shot to my guns, they are ours, even if they were creatures from a Swift novel,” Alan snarled, too testy and exhausted with a night of fear to be kind. “Feed ’em. Ration for a half mess.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Knatchbull quavered, never having seen Lewrie on any sort of tear against another man. He had been too junior, too hard pressed himself by the officers and warrants in Desperate, but now Lewrie had the look of a quarterdeck officer; the grime of the night did not improve his looks much, either.

  Knatchbull returned half an hour later with a sack filled with meat, two four-pound pieces to be shared out by the two gun crews, another four-pound piece for Alan, Knatchbull, Cony, and the four remaining blacks.

  “’Tis horse, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull apologized. “They’s shorta salt beef ’r pork. Ain’t never eat horse afore.”

  “Ever go to a two-penny ordinary in London?” Alan teased.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Then you probably have eaten horse, and in worse shape than any you’ll sink your teeth into today.” Alan laughed. “Boil it up.”

  “Yer coffee, Mister Lewrie,” Cony said, seeming to pop up out of the ground with a steaming mug in his hands. It had been battered in the bombardment, but Alan recognized it from the house.

  “Goddamn my eyes, Cony, this ain’t Scotch coffee!” Alan said, marveling at the first sip. “This is the genuine article!”

  “Them marines fetched it offa Guadeloupe, Mister Lewrie, an’ I sorta fetched it offen them in the rush an’ all, like.” Cony grinned.

  There was a sudden loud shriek in the air of an incoming shell as French or American gunners began to work over the north end of the town once more. Everyone ducked as the sound loomed louder and louder and changed in pitch, howling keener and higher like a bad singer searching for the right note. BLAMMM!

  They stood up to see the ruin of the kitchen outhouse of the abode Alan had been using as his quarters. The entire back porch of the house was gone in a shower of kindling, and there was a new crater in the ground that steamed furiously with half-burned powder particles.

  “I hope you liberated a power of it, Cony,” Alan said, brushing dirt from his sleeve. “That may be the last good coffee I’ll see for some time.”

  “Never fear that, Mister Lewrie. I made off with nigh about a pound an’ a half. Might have ta make do with that corn whiskey fer yer spirits from now on, though.”

  “I imagine I could cope,” he allowed with a taut grin.

  Cony was waiting for Lewrie to say something more, such as “Cony, what would I ever do without you; be my steward in the midshipmen’s mess and my servant when I am commissioned.” It would be a soft job for the young man, but Alan was not about to promise that much, especially since getting back aboard ship and out to sea where he could pursue his career was looking more like a forlorn hope each day. Besides, he did not want the man to feel he was too beholdened to him that early on. Cony would make a fine gentleman’s servant, but one did not let them know it until one could settle on a decent wage and conditions.

  “Ye’ll be needin’ a shave, Mister Lewrie,” Cony volunteered. “I have yer kit safe an’ snug, an’ can put an edge on yer razor while yer breakfast is acookin’.”

  Alan was not so far advanced in his adolescence to need a daily shave, but his chin did feel promisingly raspy, so he nodded his assent.

  Flattery will get you nowhere, Cony, Alan thought happily, glad to have a domestic situation to think about rather than the anonymous terror of the continuing bombardment. And when it became plain that the main effort of the enemy gunners was on the south and west corner of the town ramparts, he could almost enjoy his breakfast in peace, looking forward to a clean shave and another cup of real coffee.

  Besides, if Admiral Graves did not come from New York soon, his domestic arrangements might be the only thing he could contemplate with any hope as he lounged in some Rebel prison after the whole horrible muddle fell apart.

  CHAPTER 10

  The brutal cannonading went on for days, and the French and American batteries were prodigal with shot and shell. During the day their guns began to strike directly on the ramparts from a range of only six hundred to eight hundred yards, pounding the earthworks into ruin, smashing the fascines and gabions that reinforced them and dismounting guns that attempted to return fire. At night, high-angle shells burst with regularity in a firestorm horrendously loud and unceasing, shattering the night and everyone’s nerves, flinging men about like straws if they happened to be too close to an explosion, sheltered in a trench or not.

  Alan had been into town along with the marine officer he had once shared quarters with to search for fresh horsemeat for their men. They had located two once-magnificent saddle horses, now reduced to skin and b
ones, their heads hanging low in utter exhaustion. Hard as it was going to be, they would lead these once-proud blooded steeds back near their positions to be slaughtered for food. The corn and oats were almost gone, so dinners would be mostly fresh meat and biscuit, what little of that was left. What they had gathered and foraged had been eaten days before.

  They had barely taken charge of the animals when there had been a manic howl as a huge sixteen-inch mortar shell came whistling down nearby, and Alan had dived to the ground in mortal terror. There had been a huge and deafening blast of sound, giving him the feeling that he was swimming in air and being pelted with rocks, and then he had found himself several yards away from where he had lain, covered with damp earth and blood, his uniform in tatters. The horses were splattered about the street like fresh paint and his companion had been shredded into offal as well, only his lower legs remaining whole. His smallsword was turned into a corkscrew that smoked with heat.

  Badly shattered by the experience, Alan had almost crawled all the way back to his battery to find what comfort he could in others of his own kind, no matter how menial they were. Cony tended him, fetched out fresh togs, and put him to bed to sleep it off, which he did, in the middle of the deafening roar of bombardment.

  It was the ships burning that finally broke his spirit.

  After two days and nights of steady terror, Charon and Guadeloupe took advantage of the fact that they had been ignored so far and tried to maneuver further out into the river to make a stab at escaping, hoping that Charon, minus her artillery and stores, would be shallow enough in draft to make it between the shoals.