Dewey Lambdin - The King

"Full an' by, sir!"

"How we got this far, I don't know, sir," Hogue enthused as they swept into the harbor in Telesto's wake. "I was sure that was a battery on the point, but nary a peep from them did we hear."

"Most thoroughly in the barrel, drunk as lords, I expect," Lewrie said, clapping his hands with anticipation as he strode to the quarterdeck nettings to look down upon his gun deck. "Mister Owen, I give you leave to open fire as you bear!"

"Thankee, sir!" Owen shouted back. "Wait for it, lads, wait for it!"

Culverin could work her way much closer to the beach than any of the other vessels, where her short-ranged but heavy car-ronades had the advantage. There was a mushrooming pillar of smoke coming from beyond the native settlement. He could see a coehorn mortar shell burst in mid-air, most excellently fused, against the rim of sunrise on the horizon over the trees. And on that wide beach was a gunner's fondest dreams- stationary targets drawn up with their prows resting on the sand, their guns pointing inland and useless! At least twenty blood-red praos abandoned by their crews engaged against the troops on the far side of the little town.

Telesto opened fire first, followed by Lady Charlotte. Sand flew into the air as eighteen- and twelve-pounder balls struck the shore. Boats twitched and thrashed as they were hit, their sterns leaping out of the water to fall back downward and flail the shallow waters like a beaver's slap. Masts and paddles went spinning in confusion, and hulls split open as they were flayed with iron.

"Two cables, sir!" Owen shouted. " 'Ere we go, then! Number one gun… fire!"

Lewrie stood amazed as the flower of smoke and flame gushing from the muzzle expanded into an opening blossom larger than any he had ever witnessed, the air torn apart with weapons' song, and the twenty-four-pounder ball's progress marked by a misty trail of shock and turbulence as if they were firing combustible carcasses. The ball hit a prao on the beach, square on the stern-posts, ripped right through the light wood and flung a shower of broken timbers and laced-together planking into the air. There was a sudden, screeching rrawwrrkk! as the ball rivened her from stern to stem, to topple her in ruin.

"Huzzah, lads, do us another!" Lewrie cheered his gunners as they took aim with the rest of the starboard battery. "Quartermaster, luff us up a mite. Slow our progress to give the gunner more time to aim."

Smoky, belching crashes as the carronades spewed out their loads, thin dirty trails of roiled air emerging from the sudden mists of burned powder and then the slamming screech of ravaged wood ashore as another prao, then a third, leaped like frightened birds at being touched with iron, screaming their rrawwrrkk, rrawwrrkk! as if in their death-agonies.

"Carry on, Mister Owen," Lewrie said, picking up a telescope for a better view. In the distance, he could see villagers running one direction, pirates in their gaudier clothing falling back into the village and down to the beach to save what they could of their ships, to fall in irregular clots of terror as iron shattered and keened in clouds of sharp shards and splintered wood.

He directed his glass forward to see Telesto take Poisson D'Or under fire. The French ship had cut or slipped her cables, abandoning her anchors, and was getting underway, even as several ship's boats thrashed oars in her wake to catch her up.

"By God, I do believe that's our bastard Choundas in one of those boats!" Lewrie crowed aloud. "Can't even fight from your ship this time, can you, you pervert? Have to let some more of your people do your dying for you, you poxy whoreson Frog?"

Poisson D'Or had gotten her jibs and stays'ls set, her spanker over the stern hoisted, and had let fall her tops'Is, but they were a-cock-bill and not yet fully braced round to draw the wind. She was not yet under full control, but her larboard gunports flew open in unison, and muzzles emerged. She would fight it out.

And right in Telesto's wake sailed Lady Charlotte, paying off the wind a little as if in trepidation of getting too close, but her guns crashed out a solid broadside, and the sea around Poisson D'Or erupted in feathers of spray, and several balls hit her low, "twixt wind and water."

A hefty explosion drew Lewrie's attention back to the task at hand. A ball had hit one of the praos on her foredeck where her guns were seated, igniting a powder store, which had blown up in a great dark bulb of smoke and flame. The prao had disintegrated and was cascading down in smoldering chunks onto two other boats to either side, setting them alight and scattering the pirates around them.

"A guinea for that gunner, Mister Owen, my word on it!" Alan vowed.

"And a quarter less five!" the leadsman called out over the roar of the battle.

"Damme, sir, we could get inshore even closer!" Hogue shouted. "We're dead astern of Poisson D'Or's anchorage. Deep water, sir!"

"Luff up again, quartermaster. Pinch us closer inshore!" Alan commanded. "Mister Owen, load your next broadside with canister and grape-shot! Put an iron hail on the beach and skin the bastards!"

Culverin rounded up into the wind, ghosting almost to a stop with her sails shivering and thrashing, until the leadsman found only three fathoms of water. The quartermaster put his tiller over to the windward side to fill the sails with wind, and she heeled hard for a moment before riding back upright. They were now only a single cable off the beach, two hundred yards, just as the central part of the village came abeam. Pirates were falling back in disorder through the town, massing on the beach and heaving to launch their boats for an escape.

Alan could almost hear the sudden fatalistic sighs, the groans of alarm, as they saw the trim little ketch with her guns run out and the muzzles staring them between the eyes.

"As you bear… fire!" Lewrie called.

Five carronades lurched inboard on their recoil slides. Five crashing bellows of noise, stink and shudders. Five great blooms of smoke towered over her sides and drifted away to leeward through her sails. Five fists of God struck the beach, hewing away everything they touched, taking down the bamboo log palisade behind the beach, scything the palms above the high-tide line, lashing the thatched rooves. But most particularly, flailing the sand into a bloody cloud and scattering Lanun Rovers, bowling them over like nine-pins. And when the smoke cleared, the beach had been abandoned by the living, with only the broken dead and whimpering wounded remaining.

"Merciful God in Heaven!" Murray whispered in awe at what they had wrought. "Bloody…"

"And again, Mister Owen!" Lewrie bade. "Grape and canister!"

The next broadside only thrashed at the heels of the pirates, who fled that threat of death, back into the palisaded village for shelter, bold sea-rovers too afraid to save their ships.

"They're afire up yonder, sir," Murray pointed.

Lewrie raised his glass and looked toward the eastern end of the harbor. Praos were burning there, smudging the dawn with greasy coils of smoke and ruddy flame. "I see soldiers on the beach there!" he rejoiced. "Mister Owen, direct your fire upon the village walls and clear the way for the troops!"

"Aye, sir!"

"And a half, two!" the leadsman warned.

"I believe we may haul our wind a point or two for now, men," Lewrie told his helmsman. The long sweep of the tiller was put over to starboard, and the bows swung off the wind. Deck crew flung themselves onto the belaying pins to free the sheets and ease the set of the sails to draw more wind.

And Culverin slid to a stop.

"One fathom and a quarter!" the leadsman called out, much too late.

"Well, shit!" Lewrie fumed, turning red with embarrassment at running solidly aground, right in the midst of a battle. Of all the places to choose from, he'd staggered right onto an uncharted sandbar!

"Uhm, she struck mighty easy-like, sir." Murray frowned, his mouth working hard. "Prob'ly didn't do no damage t' her quickwork. Her gripe an' her cut-water is solid enough, and she's a tough old lady, she is, sir. Rat-run bottom, too. Ahh… er, that is, fer when the tide goes out, sir."

"Ah," Lewrie sighed, wishing it was possible to die of mortification. "Hmm. Yes. The tide. Bloody hell!"

"Aye, sir," Murray commiserated, taking a pace away.

"Well, damn my eyes!" Lewrie sighed heavily, one hand on his hip and gazing up at the masthead for clues. "Look, have 'Chips' go below and sound the forepeak to see if there's any leakage. A hand that's a good swimmer over the bows to see how hard she's… stuck! And boat crews into the launch and cutter to see if we may tow out the stream or kedge anchor and work her off. Before we're left high and bloody dry 'til supper-time."

"Aye, sir!" Murray replied, knuckling his brow.

"Damn all hard luck, sir," Hogue told him.

"I feel like such a goose-brained… twit!" Lewrie confessed.

"Happens to the best, I'm told, sir," Hogue added, though he had to work at keeping a straight face.

There was a shattering explosion just at that moment, which spun them about in their tracks. Something had set fire to Cuddalore, anchored farther to the east-perhaps a few die-hards from the prize crew Choundas had put aboard to safeguard her from being plundered by his allies. She had just gone up in a titanic blast as her magazines burst, ripping her into a plume of fragments.

Farther east, and out in deeper waters, Poisson D'Or was still fighting, with Telesto close aboard on her left beam as they fell off the wind to the north for the chain of tiny islets that guarded this harbor from the opposite Monsoons. Lady Charlotte had continued on easterly as she could, to cross the French ship's stern and rake her before turning north as well on the far side, to lay Poisson D'Or in a savage cross-fire.

'To think that but for a moment of stupidity, we could be a part of that!" Lewrie said with a bitter growl. "God, what a glorious fight they're having. And we've missed it!"

"Grand seats, though, sir," Hogue replied cheerfully. "Right in the stalls, as it were, to witness it."

Owen came up the starboard ladder to the quarterdeck and gave a cough to let them know he was there. " 'Scuse me, sir, but I've flat run outa targets, sir. No more o' those pirates t' be seen, an' half the village knocked down s' far, sir. Want me t' keep on?"

"No, Mister Owen. Continue to fire with one gun only, and I wish to have your other gunners for boat crews. We have to kedge off before the tide runs out too much."

"Aye, sir."

"Sir!" Murray called. "Those boats yonder! From Poison Door, sir! Tryin' t' land on the beach!"

Lewrie seized his glass and climbed up on the shore-side bulwark to peer at the two longboats being rowed ashore.

"Choundas!" Lewrie howled with frustration. "Can we lay a gun on him? He'll get away into the jungle, else!"

"Er, nossir," Owen almost moaned, wringing his grimy hands in frustration. "He's outa our gun-arcs, 'less we had a fo'c'sle chase-gun. An' it don't look like he'll put it anywhere close t' our poor range!"

"He'll get away at last!" Lewrie snorted in disbelief. All of their labors and suffering for nothing… again! "Mister Hogue!"

"Sir?"

"Take charge of the ship, sir," Lewrie exclaimed. "Keep Mister Murray and Mister Owen with you, and defend her should the pirates try to get off the beach and take her now she's aground. Use your artillery over our heads should we run into trouble on the beach. Are the boat crews assembled? Good. Arm them. Muskets, a pistol each and a cutlass. Cony, fetch my case of pistols!"