Dewey Lambdin - The King`s Commission

Willing or not, Alan had to climb up onto the larboard gangway to judge the best moment, his hanger tangling between his shins. They would pass the Frenchman's stern at close pistol-shot.

Damme if we might win this yet! Alan thought as he drew his lovely gift hanger and let the pristine blade flash silver in the sun.

"Ready… as you bear… Fire!"

The larboard chase gun went off and its load of double-shot and grape gouged the taffrail open, shattering the carved cherubs, dolphins and saints into gilt tatters, strewing six French naval infantry down like corn-stalks. Then the nine-pounders began to discharge, and the stern windows, the larboard quarter-gallery and the transom were riddled in a flurry of broken planking. The rudder twitched back and forth and the mizzen mast shivered as it was struck. Screams from the French ship could be heard as her gun crews were mown down by the shot passing down the length of her decks.

"That's the way, Desperates!" Alan howled in triumph, waving his sword over his head in derision at the French he could see on the poop and quarterdeck. Swivels barked from the tops and the Marine sharpshooters let fly. Peck and his squads formed up to larboard and began to volley into her. "Sponge out! Overhaul your tackle! Charge guns!"

Desperate put her helm down and began to swing back onto the wind to rake the Frenchman's stern with the other battery, but the frigate, bearing the name Capricieuse on her torn gilt stern-placque tried to bear up as well, blocking their way.

"Avast!" Railsford screamed. "Helm hard up! Lewrie, ready to rake her again with the larboard battery!"

Quicker to return to her original course, Desperate wavered, then got herself under control. Capricieuse tried to sag down off the wind with her, but Desperate was already to leeward. The angle was acute, but it would be a stern rake, right up through the shattered wood, at least into her after batteries.

"Wait for the transom, wait for the transom!" Alan screamed in glee as he capered up and down the gangway, looking down on his gun crews. Sweating men hauled on tackles to heave the heavy guns up the slightly canted deck. Priming quills were inserted. Crows and levers were shouldered and muscles strained near to rupture to shift the aim of the barrels. Fists were raised in the air as gun-captains signaled their readiness. A few shots were fired by the French from their own larboard side before Desperate passed out of their gun-arcs.

"As you bear… fire!"

One at a time, the guns roared out their challenge, and spat their tongues of flame through the smoke. Wood on the larboard quarter was chewed up. The rudder twitched again as a ball smacked into the transom post. The mizzen swayed and jerked, and Alan could see one ball carom off an interior beam with a puff of smoke and dust and paint to go ricocheting down the length of the gun deck. The after guns belched fire, then Desperate was staggered once more as though she had just been struck hard herself, but Alan could not see one French gun that could bear to do that damage.

Capricieuse sagged down off the wind, fully presenting her stern to Desperate, trying to bring her unused starboard battery into action, and there was no movement from aft to shift their ship's course. Alan scrambled back down to the gun deck off the gangway, where it would be safer to suffer what they were about to get in retribution.

"Got a gun burst aft, sir!" a runner told him. "One o' them brass nines. Blew a hole right up through the deckhead!"

"Tell Avery to deal with it." Alan shrugged, intent on his men. "Load with double-shot! Run out!"

"Tha's just it, sir, Mister Avery's bad hurt, an' the quarter-gunner's dead," the man told him.

"Oh, shit. Hogan, leave the chase gun and go aft. You're a quarter-gunner now!" Alan chilled. He grabbed Hogan as he trotted by and held him close for a moment. "Avery's been hurt. Get word to me on how he is."

"Aye, I'll do that, sir."

"Ports is openin'!" someone warned.

"Gun crews, lay down!" Alan yelped. If they were struck while the men were still on their feet, it would be a slaughter. A second later, the broadside from the fresh battery struck them, and wood and iron howled in agony and the deck shuddered beneath them. Alan stuck his head up and looked around, coughing on smoke and engrained dust.

"Up and at 'em, Desperates, come on, larboard!" he called, rising. "Prime your guns! Point! On the up-roll… fire!"

A ragged cheer arose as the tortured mizzen-mast of the French frigate gave a final shudder and toppled forward, chopped to flinders below the deck by those stern rakes. It fell into component pieces, top-mast dropping straight down as the lower mast fell forward, and the t'gallant and royal masts and spars spiraled about to drape themselves over the main topmast, dragging it sideways in a tangle of rope and canvas.

"Damme, will you look at that!" Alan hooted. "Just bloody beautiful! Keep it up, lads, and we'll have the bastard!"

The aged carpenter came scrambling up from below decks past the parade of powder monkeys, shoving them out of the way in his haste to get to the quarterdeck, and Alan noted that "Chips" was soaking wet from mid-thigh down, which made him suddenly wonder if Desperate would stay afloat long enough to actually "have the bastard," or whether the bastard, damaged as the French frigate was, would end up having them!

The youngest midshipman was back suddenly, tugging on Alan's coat once more, his face streaked with soot and powder stains, the tracks of tears carved into the grime.

"Please, Mister Lewrie, sir, the captain presents his respects, and requests could you spare half a dozen hands to assist the carpenter."

"Hulled and leaking, are we?" Alan asked close, so the hands would not hear.

"Sinking, sir!" The boy quailed, but soft enough for discretion.

"God's balls," Alan breathed. "What next, I wonder? Maple?"

"Aye, sir," the fo'c'sle gunner answered, breaking free of the larboard battery.

"Select five hands who aren't doing us much good at the moment and assist the ship's carpenter, if you would be so kind," Alan directed, trying to remain calm, but it didn't fool Maple, who rolled his eyes in alarm and glanced upward at the cross-deck beams where the boats most definitely weren't any longer. Other than flotsam from a wreck, the boats were the only life-saving devices available.

"Oh, shit, Mister Lewrie, sir!" Maple sighed, dashing off.

If I'd stayed in London, I'd have become a wealthy pimp by now, Alan speculated sourly. I can't even bloody swim!

There was a volley of musketry of such volume and intensity that only a company of infantry could have made it. A larboard waister came tumbling down from the forebraces to sprawl across the breech of a gun, his face shot away and his brains oozing and sizzling on the hot metal.

Alan ducked to look out a gunport once more. Capricieuse was close-aboard, not fifty yards off, her bulwarks lined with men as though her last chance was to board Desperate and take her in a hot hand-to-hand action.

"Quoins out!" Alan yelled to his gunners. "Load grape and canister atop ball! Cease fire and stand by for a broadside!"

"Double-shotted, zurr!" a gun-captain called back.

"Worm 'em out of there and reduce your powder charges! I'll not have another burst barrel!"

"Got grape, but no canister!" another shouted.

"Fuck it! Shoot out your loads!" Alan thundered, at the same time grabbing the nearest powder monkey on his way below with an empty leather cylinder. "Tell Mister Tulley in the magazine I need grape and canister and reduced charges. I'm going to triple-shot the guns!"

That brought Tulley up from below in a rush, his ginger hair sticking up in all directions and his sun-burned complexion glowing at the danger to his precious artillery.

"Damme, sir, you'll burst my barrels! Where's the master gunner? I'll see him and…"

"He's dead and gone, Mister Tulley," Alan said brutally. "Now we have a Frog frigate at pistol-shot and I want round-shot, grape and canister with reduced charges or we're boarded and taken. So what are you going to do to help me?"

"Excess loaders from the starboard battery, fetch canister!" the burly gunner's mate said, his face paling with shock at hearing of his senior's demise, and the straits they were in. "Boys, tell the Yeoman of the Powder Room to issue reduced charges! My God, Mister Lewrie, my merciful God!"

The sound of cannon fire had ceased. Either the French had stripped their gun deck of men for a boarding party, or they were also loading a massive broadside and were waiting for the proper time to fire it into Desperate to shatter resistance just before they came surging over the rails.

"Let's go, let's go!" Alan prodded as the case-shot and grape bags came up, along with the half-size saluting charges. With so much iron-mongery crammed into the muzzles, a larger powder measure would truly burst the barrels, and at such close range, a smaller amount of powder would be preferable anyway. Low velocity shot did not shoot through scantlings clean, but bulged and ravaged them, producing more splinters that ripped men apart, creating more havoc.

The midshipman was back, this time not so polite.

"The captain wants to know what the deuce you're playing at. Mister Lewrie, sir?" the boy wailed. "They are close aboard and Mister Railsford demands you fire into them before they grapple to us!"

"Triple-shotted broadside, go tell them!" Alan growled, pacing past the boy as if he wasn't there. "Go, get aft, you minnikin!"

"Charge yer guns… shot yer guns, round-shot, then grape, then case-shot…" Tulley was directing with the voice of a bawling steer, his face its usual red flush once more.

"Mister Lewrie!" the second young midshipman yelled, dashing to his side.

"Holy hell, will you stop pestering me?"

"Mister Railsford orders you prepare to repel boarders!"

"Run out!" Tulley screeched, and the hands tailed on the tackles to draw their pieces across the deck with the rumble of a cattle stampede as the small wooden wheels of the trucks squealed and drummed.

"Gun-captains to remain, tackle-men and loaders take arms and prepare to repel boarders!" Alan cried. "Tulley, give 'em the broadside and then bring your hands to join me. Let's go, men!"

"Prick yer cartridges… prime yer guns…" Tulley droned on, as the excess hands dug into the weapons tubs for cutlasses and boarding axes, stripped the pikes from the beckets around the bases of the masts, and flung open the arms chests for heavy (and usually inaccurate) pistols. Once more Alan was at a disadvantage, for he did not have any of his pistols with him. He took a tomahawk-sized boarding axe for his off-hand and stuck it into his breeches, unwilling to try his luck with a Sea Pattern pistol again.

"Up to the gangway, quickly now!"

"Take yer aim… stand by…" Tulley called as they scrambled up to the larboard bulwark behind the Marines, who were still volleying into the foe. Sedge dashed past him on his way forward to join the youthful Burney to protect the fo'c'sle. Alan looked back to see Railsford bringing all the afterguard and mizzen mast crew to the break of the quarterdeck to defend the after portion of the ship. Musket bayonets glinted dully from those hands who had gotten a chance to break out the long-arms. Pike heads bristled like medieval infantry ranks, and cutlasses fanned the air as men loosened their arms for the bloody work to come. The French lined their own rails, striped-jerseyed sailors and men in check shirts much like British seamen, naval infantry in blue coats with red facings, with here and there an officer in blue coat edged with gold oak-leaf lace and epaulettes, with red waist-coats.