The King's Privateer Read online

  “You went aboard?” Captain Cheney gasped.

  “Well, I swam out as close as I could, sir,” Hogue grinned, making a night approach through a shark-infested lagoon sound like nothing much, but secretly pleased with his own fortitude. “As to guns, they’ve no springs on their cables, sir, none that I could see. There was too much light on the water between ships, so I could not approach Stella Maris, but it didn’t look as if she had springs fixed.”

  “What about artillery ashore?” Sir Hugo pressed.

  “They’ve a log and thatch fort, sir, rectangular, with one long side facing the sea and the beach. There are what look to be storage buildings inside the compound,” Chiswick replied. “Where they got the lumber, God knows. Probably from looted ships. They’ve four guns on that seaward side, and two each on either shorter end. Light stuff, by the look of the platforms they were mounted on. Four-pounders on naval trucks, not field carriages. And there was a lot of drinking going on.”

  “And I suppose you snuck up to the walls like a Red Indian?” Sir Hugo snorted.

  “Well, yes, sir,” Chiswick smiled, proud of himself as well.

  “Well, then!” Sir Hugo beamed, clapping Chiswick on the shoulder. “That was bravely done, sir! Now, Lieutenant Lewrie. Just what do we do about this?”

  “I defer to your military prowess, Colonel Willoughby,” Alan said in return. “When would you like to land your troops for an assault?”

  “Now,” Sir Hugo purred. “Right bloody now, while their attention is elsewhere, and their bellies are full of piss-poor brandy.”

  “Any lookouts watching to seaward, Burge?” Alan asked.

  “None that we found. There’s a start on a four-legged tower in the palisaded encampment, but it’s too low yet to even see over this peninsula. I don’t think they’ve had this place constructed long.”

  “Weather’s decent,” Lewrie pondered. “Captain Cheney, what’s the state of the tide around first sparrow-fart? Say at four A.M.?”

  “About the middle of the ebb, sir. But surely, you would wait for the stronger ship to arrive from Calcutta,” Cheney replied, paling.

  “Since I don’t know when that will be, sir, and I am here now and ready, I cannot delay,” Lewrie stated firmly, not feeling quite as firm inside.

  Goddamn my eyes, will you look at these fools, looking at me as if I’ve Moses’ scrolls tucked into my side-pockets! Ayscough surely couldn’t have meant this much responsibility for me. I might be going into as big a hornet’s nest as that idiot Captain Nelson did back at Turk’s Island, and look what a ball’s-up that was!

  “How long for your troops to assemble on this beach, set up artillery on this flat bench at the base of the peninsula and be ready to advance, Sir Hugo? I assume you prefer a dawn attack.”

  “First boat-loads on the beach at one A.M. would be better,” Sir Hugo sniffed. “Takes time to sway out those guns of ours, get them ashore, mount them on their trails and carriages and man-haul them up this slope, rocky as Captain Chiswick says it is. Sure to be noisy, as well.”

  “Captain Cheney, could you please be so good as to provide some scrap sails and rope fragments to muffle the noises for them, sir?”

  “Aye, Mister Lewrie, but …”

  “Do you come to anchor here, about half a mile off-shore, then,” Lewrie pressed on, feeling like a toddler having the presumption to purchase a house. “You have twenty fathoms of water there before it begins to shoal: sand, rock and coral bottom. If all else fails, you are in the island’s lee, and may fetch-to without drifting too far to the west between waves of boats. Better yet, take all of my ship’s boats to help things along. I shall then stand off-and-on without the harbor entrance, and enter harbor at … six A.M.? Will there be enough light for you then, Colonel? Even at low tide, this entrance channel shows a possible five fathoms, and Culverin only draws one and a half. With luck, we shall overawe the French. With none at all, we’ll have to close on Stella Maris here and get within two cables to shoot her to pieces with our carronades.”

  “Who shall fire first, then?” Sir Hugo asked.

  “Either way, they’re sailors, mostly,” Lewrie schemed. “When things go to Hell, they run for their ship first. You open fire at six A.M., or when you see me enter the harbor channel. Captain Cheney, I’d admire if you had Lady Charlotte somewhere well in sight and close astern of me as you are able around that time. You may, at long range, resemble a warship just enough to take the stuffing out of them.”

  “I shall try, sir, but should I enter harbor?”

  “Block the entrance channel if all else fails.”

  “Aye, sir,” Cheney said, looking squeamish enough that Alan knew he’d be nowhere near the harbor entrance at six A.M., for all the best reasons. He’d not risk his thin-sided transport at the behest of some jumped-up junior Navy lieutenant! Well, just as long as he may land the troops and stand seaward where he can be seen, Lewrie sighed, that would be good enough.

  “Here’s to victory on the morrow, gentlemen,” Sir Hugo proposed, as glasses of wine were passed around by Cheney’s steward. “Confusion to the French!”

  “And clear heads for us!” Lewrie chimed in.

  The rest of the night was Hell. Lewrie went back to his ship and went below to sleep. Her former master had had a large berth as big as a double-bed back home built into her stern quarters, widening the transom settee into a solid bedstead. Instead of hay or corn-shucks, the mattress was stuffed with Indian cotton, which wicked up any night sweats one would suffer below decks in the sweltering tropics. He had come to enjoy the berth, with both stern sash-windows open for a sea breeze to cool him well enough to sleep undisturbed in those hours that a ship’s captain could expect to find rest.

  But this night would not pass, and he could find no ease. Not even a stiff glass of brandy could numb him into true slumber. And there could be little of that, anyway. Culverin stood off-and-on, reaching across the easterly winds. First north toward the island, until near enough to see the hint of bonfires, then tacking out to sea once more, always clawing in her tacks up to the east to correct drift to leeward. Every two hours, he was summoned to the deck to supervise the maneuver and lay the course he desired.

  In between, below decks, he would shuck his clothing and attempt to sleep. But then, “What if?” he would think, and his mind would go galloping off on a flight of frenzied imagining. Had he forseen all that could go wrong? Had he forgotten anything vital? And then those possible disasters would play themselves out in half-nodding nightmares from which he would snap awake, only to slip into another.

  “Goddamn, I’m only twenty-two years old!” he muttered aloud. “Who in their right minds’d ever give a twit like me this much to be responsible for?” He might get people killed on the morrow. He knew some people would die. For him. What if they died for nothing?

  Like the Battle of The Chesapeake. Like Yorktown. Like Jenkins Neck. The expedition into the barrens of Florida, or trying to retake Turk’s Island.

  He’d go back over his plan once more, finding gaping flaws in it. Would shiver with chill and bolt upright, suddenly finding need to speak to Lady Charlotte or his father, now ashore, just one last time. But that was impossible. Would pore over his one poor chart searching for omens, for portents of victory or defeat.

  They came about for the last time at four A.M., just as the last of eight bells chimed, ending the mid-watch, and the bosun’s pipes sang to summon “All Hands” to scrub decks and stow their hammocks in the bulwark nettings for the day.

  Time, too, to prepare for what the dawn would bring. Lewrie dressed in one of his Navy uniforms, spurning civilian clothes for the day’s bloody work. The coat and waist-coat were badly wrinkled from being pressed to the bottom of his sea-chest, mildewy, and stiff with salt crystals from being so long at sea.

  “Ready about, Mister Hogue?” he asked.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Helm alee!” Lewrie shouted. With nothing aloft but fore-and-aft sails on both
masts, there was little of the usual heavy labor involved. Except for the jibs up forward, they almost tacked themselves.

  “Should be here, if we maintained an easy four knots during the night,” Lewrie said, peering at the chart tacked to the traverse board. “A little east of north would put us here, even with the harbor entrance, by half-past five. Perhaps that would be even better than waiting until six, and full dawn.”

  “And if we have slipped to leeward that far during the night, we may harden up to the wind and make it good, sir,” Hogue added.

  “D’you want t’ inspect the decks, sir?” Murray asked, coming aft from the waist of the ship.

  “White decks are not the greatest thing on our minds this morning, Mister Murray,” Lewrie replied, unable to suppress a smile. “Hands to breakfast. Then douse the galley fires soon as they’ve eaten.”

  “Aye, sir,” Murray replied, knuckling his brow.

  “Got some ’ot coffee, sir,” Cony offered. “An’ wot’ll ya be ’avin’ fer yer breakfas’, sir?”

  “Just the coffee, Cony, thankee,” Lewrie replied, taking the mug in both hands to savor its warmth and its aroma.

  “Land ho!” the lookout called.

  “Where away?”

  “One point off the starboard bow, sir!”

  “That should be the central hill, the highest point above the sea. And a little to the left of a direct line for the entrance,” Alan surmised, bending over the chart again, then straightening. “Quartermaster? Larboard your helm, half a point, no more. Pinch us up to windward a mite.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “They should be able to see us by half-past five, sir,” Hogue prodded.

  “Aye,” Lewrie nodded. “Bows on, coming into harbor like we’re expected, with no flag flying. Now who, I ask you, would be stupid enough to enter a pirate’s lair but another pirate, Mister Hogue? They might go on their guard, but they don’t know what a surprise we have ashore already. We shall have to chance it from here on.”

  “Aye, sir,” Hogue shrugged with him.

  “You get below and eat if you’ve a mind. I have the deck,” Lewrie said. “Spell me when you get back so I may shave. And then, Mister Hogue, we shall beat to Quarters.”

  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 19th 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 b
roaching 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 carronades 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!