The King's Privateer Page 31

  “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 axeheads 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 Maris 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 Maris’ 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 Maris 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 Maris, 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 steerageway.

  “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!”

  Chapter 7

  “ … Stella Maris wrecked on the shoals and her surviving crewmen made prisoner.”

  He wrote in his lieutenant’s journal, which would also be a first draft fo
r his report to Captain Ayscough when he came to the island, and the official account of the venture someday in far-off London and the Admiralty.

  “We discovered storehouses ashore in the palisaded fortress.”

  “Hmm,” he speculated. It wasn’t exactly a fortress, now, was it? A bamboo log palisade with ship’s planking for reinforcement, and built so amateurishly one could have hurled a large dog through it anywhere one wished. Still, “fortress” would read better back in official circles than “armed cattle pen.” He dipped his goose-quill pen in ink and continued, more than a little tongue-in-cheek.

  “The goods amassed were considerable, both gen’l trade goods to an estimated value of £50,000, & quantities of Gangetic Opium & Silver rendered into I oz. bars (Chinese taels) to a value of £200,000. Also discovered were stands of arms (French Mod. 1763 St. Etienne Arsenal muskets with all accoutrements) cutlasses & pole arms (boarding pikes & espontoons), powder & shot, six 4-pdr. French naval carriage guns, powder & shot Ditto & twelve 9-pdr cannon un-mounted, Do.”

  He leaned back and took a sip of a rather good Bordeaux that had traveled exceptionally well all the way from its point of origin to this dry and rocky Hell halfway around the world, and outlined to his superiors what a clever little fellow he had been.

  How he had dismounted some of Lady Charlotte’s twelve-pounders and sited a three-gun battery on the point of the western peninsula to protect the harbor they now occupied. How they had finished the observation tower in the “fort” to an advantageous height, giving them a thirty-mile radius to espy the arrival of their foes, or the relief ships. How the captured guns with carriages had been sited to scour the harbor should any ship get inside, and the crew of the Lady Charlotte had been “commandeered” (he preferred that word to “press-ganged”) into serving as gunners.

  Stella Maris stripped of all her fittings and useful articles, her artillery and powder that had not gotten soaked employed in further defensive positions atop the high ground of both headlands before she was burned to the waterline and the ribs and carcass towed off the shoals to sink, out of sight, in deeper water.

  “Stella Maris provided material with which to refit Poor Richard. This American Whaler was restored to her Capt. one Lemuel Prynge & such of her crew as survived their seizure & cruel enforced Servitude, their rightful Cargo put back aboard & Poor Richard allowed to sail for Manila, the closest Port where they could hope to meet up with other Yankee vessels & a snr. Owner & Master bearing dipl. title of Consul, with whom Capt. Prynge assured me the most strenuous Representations against the French Govt. would be presented.”

  He concluded by listing the very few dead and wounded among the Native Infantry, the utter lack of hurt to his ship or his men, the great number of French dead and wounded, the names of the Americans who had died or been hurt by capture or captivity and strong praise for those of his warrants and seamen he thought deserving.

  “What else?” he muttered, leaning back in the rattan chair that creaked and gave most alarmingly as he did so. The table, the very walls of this shore house were of the same material, fetched from God knew where. Surely not from anything that grew on the island, that was for certain. Even the thatch of the roof was of palm fronds, and fairly fresh, too. So it had been a recent import to Spratly Island. He thought about putting down his suspicions that the Illana pirates had already come to visit, but decided against it. A lieutenant’s journal was for wind, tide and sea-states, for weather or ship’s routine. For a different slant on events—not for idle musings.

  He closed the ink-pot, sluiced his pen-nib off in a cup of water and blew on the pages he had written to dry them. A slow process, that. Mr. Brainard had promised cooler climes at Spratly, but if this was in anyway dryer, or cooler than Bencoolen, it was a matter of degree only.

  They had had several spells of freshening weather as the winds shifted more sou’easterly to the seasonal norms of the summer Monsoons. Wind, lashings of rain, cool, blustery half-gales that so far had not swelled to ship-threatening storms. The cisterns and rock-pools had filled with water, and Culverin and Lady Charlotte had caught hundreds of gallons of fresh water in canvas chutes. Enough to succor the men and animals brought to the island, enough to support all the livestock running wild or penned up for slaughter the French had brought.

  Frankly, they had enough livestock to start a well-run estate, and that was just the imported animals. What ran wild on the island could keep one awake at night with their miniature stampedes and alarums. Everyone had been eating well ever since they arrived.

  He finally got the ink dry enough to roll up the pages and tie them with a hank of thin rope, then went out to check on his latest project. Rather, his father’s latest project, for which he was giving up a few crew members.

  No ship could take being fired upon with heated shot. Once a red-hot iron ball lodged in a ship’s timbers, the tinder-dry wood took fire like fat pine-shavings. Lt. Col. Sir Hugo St. George Willoughby had suggested a battery for that purpose, and Lewrie had concurred eagerly. Said battery was now installed above the “fortress,” halfway up the rocky slopes of the central hill. He toiled up the rough path to the battery to take a look at it.

  Two twelve-pounders sat in a hollow partially dug into the slope, screened from view by a shielding wall of boulders laid loose against each other and some dry brush. There were two wide embrasures through which they could fire, and cover the entire harbor. And, being about sixty feet higher than the beach, gained an advantage in range over a ship-mounted artillery piece that might try to return fire. There was a magazine dug into the back slope, and off to one side where it never could threaten the powder supply, was a rock forge where iron cannon balls could be heated before being carried to the battery and loaded down the muzzles of the guns.

  Firewood should have been a problem, except that Stella Maris had provided tons of scrap lumber, and enough bar-iron to make the cradle-sized carrying tools for heated shot. Poor Richard had also gladly sold several barrels of whale oil with which to ignite the forge. And Alan had an idea lurking in the back of his mind about the rest of the whale oil.

  “Good morrow to you, Alan,” his father said as he reached the battery.

  “And to you as well, sir,” he replied. “Are you ready for a test of this contraption?”

  “Just about,” Sir Hugo nodded. Several of his sepoys were hacking hull and deck planking from the unfortunate Stella Maris into kindling. “Ever used heated shot?”

  “No, sir.” Alan chuckled. “Not a good idea aboard a ship at any time, and during battle, well … I’m told the French tried it but had disastrous results. Been shot at with it at Yorktown, though.”

  “By my calculations, I expect to be able to fire random shot to almost the outer harbor breakers along the reef line,” Sir Hugo said.

  “But there’s only two fathoms at high tide out there. Anything worth shooting at would be aground that far out,” Lewrie replied. One of his other ideas to keep his hands busy and out of mischief or boresome rumbling, was to survey the harbor at low tide and update Mr. Brainard’s chart, correcting what he found mismarked or filling in a few mysterious gaps.

  Those mistakes and gaps were horrendous. Taking the average of noon sights with Hogue and Captain Cheney and his officers, they found that Spratly Island itself was incorrectly charted, out of its actual location by at least fifty miles! The coastline was half imaginings, and the soundings inside the harbor seemed to be the speculations of a terribly optimistic mind. It made him cringe every time he thought about how he had trusted that chart when he sailed into harbor, over that broken reef wall and through the pass, maneuvering free as a brainless sparrow over its entire length and breadth during the fight with Stella Maris. In a proper ship, such as a frigate, he’d have been wrecked half a dozen times over!

  “I’d admire a copy of that chart of yours, then,” Sir Hugo bade. “Very useful for my binki-nabob. My gunnery officer.”

  “I shall have it done directly, sir,” Al
an offered.

  “Sail ho!” the tower lookout screamed.

  “Choundas?” Sir Hugo stiffened.

  “It very well may be,” Alan agreed grimly. “’Tis the middle of April. Time enough for him realize Sicard isn’t available any longer and then sail from Pondichery.”

  It was a jumbled run down to the enclosed fort, then up the rickety tower’s bamboo ladders to the top platform. Easier to continue to the top of the hill he was already on, which was almost as high. Sir Hugo grabbed a spy-glass and they halfran, half-trudged up the slope to the windswept crest.

  “Where away!” Alan shouted down. He could not hear the lookout’s returning shout, but the man pointed. To the east! “Bloody hell? Now who could this be?”

  “Choundas, coming back from an early meeting with his natives,” Sir Hugo snapped. “He might have never gone back to the Indian Ocean, not with us on his trail. Get an early start. And reinforcements.”

  Once they had gotten their breath back, and had steady hands, Sir Hugo extended the tubes of the telescope and peered at the eastern horizon.

  “Here,” he snarled. “Can’t see a damned thing.”

  And, Alan noted, his hands were none too steady, either.

  “If I might borrow your shoulder for a rest, sir?” he asked. “And, as the sailor in the family, I might know what to look for. A sail very much resembles what you might take for a cloud. Some …”

  There was a sail out there to the east. In point of fact, there were a lot of sails. Dark tan, they looked, almost silhouetted by the early morning sun. And fairly low to the water. With the wind out of the sou’east now as a steady Trade Wind, he was looking at the cusps of someone’s tops’ls, perhaps, angled to take the wind from the stern quarter, running almost free with a landsman’s breeze. But there were so many of them! Almost as many as the first sight he’d had from the Desperate frigate’s t’gallant yard the morning the French fleet under de Grasse sailed back into Chesapeake Bay!