Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey

"Oh, 'bout ten or fifteen degrees, I s'pose," Wandsworth mused, conjuring on his slate, and squinting at it and the shore.

"Mister Langlie? Haul in the stern spring-line."

"Aye aye, sir!"

"Deck, there!" a lookout called down. "Ships off the larboard beam… workin' into harbour! Five sail… full-rigged ships! First is a seventy-four!"

Lewrie walked over to the larboard side and raised his telescope, but it was hopeless; Proteus was so swathed in spent powder that everything beyond fifty yards from the deck was lost in a bellicose haze.

"What flag?" Lewrie shouted upwards.

"Ours, sir! Leadin' seventy-four is Halifax ! Know her tops'l patches!" the lookout confirmed.

"Did your brigadier send a small boat for aid?" he asked of the Royal Artillery man.

"Might've, but there hasn't been enough time, surely," Wandsworth replied, acting irritated that his work on his slate was interrupted.

"Perhaps not," Lewrie had to agree, thinking that a small boat would barely have had time to reach Port-Au-Prince, and certainly could not have stirred up a rescue force that quickly.

"Just this set of guns, at first," Wandsworth decided, " 'til we are shot in, and then we'll use those up yonder."

"The quarterdeck carronades… then the forecastle guns," Lewrie prompted.

"Whatever you say," Wandsworth muttered, bending over a carronade barrel with a triangular piece of metal; graduated in arcane marks and bearing a plumb-bob. "Challenging, this. No dispart sights, and no elevation screws on your long guns… just the carronades. Do it by guess and by God… oh, well. Ready? By battery… fire!"

It went on for hours under a blazing hot noonday sun, and well into a sultry, airless afternoon. The guns hammered and bellowed and spewed, 'til even the officers bound kerchiefs over their ears to protect their hearing. Proteus reeked of sulfur and rotten-egg fumes, and trickled tendrils of spent powder gases at her planking and seams as if being smoked belowdecks to drive out the rats and insect pests. The swab-buckets and fire-buckets were filled at least twice with water, and the carronade and 6-pounder crews were rotated every half-hour with re-enforcements from the main-battery men, so those relieved could search for a patch of shade and sluice down a tot of water, panting for a single breath of clean air. Shift left, shift right on the spring-lines; reduce the charges and loft murder shorter; add a dram or dram-and-a-half, and spew grape and cannisters of musket balls, sometimes solid roundshot in conjunction with a slightly greater range, all around the perimeter of the town. Wherever there was an upsurge of enemy activity, the guns were there, shot sleeting into the dense forest and undergrowth to the point that, whenever the smoke cleared a bit, they could see whole new clearings, whole new glades, that their guns had made.

"By God, Captain Lewrie, d'ye know, there just might be something in this indirect fire twaddle!" Wandsworth chortled, clapping his hands together over and over in glee. "There's an article in it, for certain. Some mathematics to be worked out, so others could copy what we've done, but… hmmm. Dare I imagine it could someday be termed the Wandsworth System, hey? Usin' naval guns as mortars, and usin' flag signals t'mask one's own batteries? Woolwich Arsenal, t'be sure, but…! Perhaps the Royal Academy, too, for the science of it?"

" 'Scuse me, Cap'um," Foster, the Yeoman of the Powder, said as he scampered past the First Officer, after receiving permission to be on the quarterdeck. "We've run clean outta made-up cartridge bags for the carronades an' six-pounders, and fired off almost three whole kegs o' powder. Haveta break out another, Cap'um… outta the second tier."

"How long?" Lewrie asked, nigh deaf and having to lean close to hear what the fellow was saying.

"Quarter hour, Mister Bess the Gunner's Mate says, sir."

"Very well, thankee, Foster. Captain Wandsworth?"

"Hey?"

"Captain Wandsworth?" Lewrie repeated, louder and nearer.

"Heard ye the first time, no need t'shout, d'ye know, Captain Lewrie," Wandsworth said, cupping a hand to his ear, even so.

"We have to cease fire! Out of made bags, and low on powder!"

"Uhm, sir…" Foster added, still on the quarterdeck, most likely for a breath of air himself, Lewrie didn't wonder. "We're low on grape and cannister, too. Mighty low. We can make up stands from the twelve-pounder supply, but it'll take some time, Cap'um."

"Low on grape and cannister, too!" Lewrie shouted to Wandsworth.

"Yes, I could use a glass!" Wandsworth shouted back, beaming.

Exasperated at the bobbing, grinning fool, Lewrie took hold of Wandsworth's slate and wrote his message down.

"Oh! Silly me!" Wandsworth barked. "Yes, we'll cease fire!"

And the silence, after so long, was almost painful.

Lewrie took out his watch and opened the face, shocked that it was nearly 5 p.m., an hour into the First Dog. He looked forward and saw a ship's boy, smeared with powder stains from serving as a monkey to a forecastle gun, peering into a sandglass and ready to ring the ship's bell to mark the hour. Someone may have done that for all the time they'd been firing, for all Lewrie knew; to his senses, everything rang, by then. "Mister Coote?" Lewrie called down to the waist to the purser. "How is the scuttle butt?"

"Bone dry, sir. I've sent hands to break out another cask. And the rum issue was cancelled, as well. Should I…?"

"Aye. Fetch it up. Bosun? Be ready to pipe 'Clear Decks And Up Spirits,' soon as the water and rum are on deck," Lewrie bade. "Make it a full measure, Mister Coote. No 'sippers' or 'gulpers.' "

"How long, sir?" Wandsworth asked, licking dry lips.

"At least a half hour, sorry t'say," Lewrie told him. "We are not supplied with grape and cannister the way your Army guns are. You have what… half your caissons full of that, half of roundshot?"

"About that, yessir," Wandsworth agreed.

"We carry about one-in-five loads. We're almost depleted."

"Hmmm… perhaps, once yon two-decked ship of the line comes into harbour, I should go aboard her, then," Wandsworth decided, gesturing with his chin towards Halifax and her small convoy, that had yet to get within three miles of an anchorage. The wind, as it always did under a long cannonading, had been shot to a funereal stillness, and 3rd Rates were nowhere near as agile or as weatherly in light airs as a frigate. It might be sundown before Halifax hauled up within hailing distance, much less gun-range.

"She may not be able to anchor as close inshore as us," Lewrie speculated. "Might be better, did we borrow grape and cannister from her. She mounts twenty-four pounders, those should fit into our carronades. But once the six-pounder stands and bags are gone…"

"Ah, I see," Wandsworth seemed to agree. "And, did Scaiff and I 'shift our flags,' as it were, we'd have to recalculate our figures for the height of her gundecks, distance from shore, and all. I agree. Better we borrow than let that ship supercede us, Captain Lewrie."

"Uhm… sorry I have to ask, Captain Wandsworth, but… once it's dark, what do we do?" Lewrie wondered aloud.

"Ah, well… hmmm!" Wandsworth said, tugging at an ear, as if trying to get it to work properly once more. "Now that's a poser, if I do say so. Can't see signals from my men or yours, after dark. We could fire blind, since we know we're striking beyond our trenchworks. But, do the Samboes pull back to rest, we'd be wasting our shot in harassing fire. Might keep 'em awake, might not."

"And then once they come at our troops in the morning, we would really be low on effective shot," Lewrie grimly concluded.

"Well, it may be moot, after all, sir," Wandsworth said with a weary grin. "Surely, those ships coming into port are here to take us off. Another day of this, and we'll have everything loaded aboard the little ships, and won't leave the Samboes a torn shoe or dirty sock."

"One may pray," Lewrie said, nodding with hopeful agreement. He was weary, too, even from mostly standing and pacing about, on his feet for hours. He strode over to the larboard side, hands pressed against his kidneys to ease the kink in his back, arching it, and lifting his feet high and shaking his calves to spur life back into them and ease the slow burn in his soles.

"Signal, sir!" Midshipman Grace yelped. "From Halifax… our number. 'Up Anchor' and… ' Make Way ' sir. She's spelling out…"

There was a much longer string of code flags to interpret.

" 'Clear… Way… To Quays,' sir!" Grace puzzled out slowly.

"Damme, do we move, Mister Wandsworth's calculations'll be off, and he'd have to start from scratch," Lewrie muttered. "Mister Grace? Hoist 'Unable,' followed by 'Am Engaged.' And we can only hope all of this gun smoke'll tell 'em what we've been up to."

A new cask of water was fetched to the main deck; the Marines, with muskets and fixed bayonets, and fife and drum, ceremoniously got the gay red-and-gilt rum keg to the forecastle belfry, and the people began to queue up for their tots, chattering and laughing along as the merry tinkle of the string of copper measuring/drinking cups jangled.

"She repeats her first signals, sir," Mr. Grace said, turning a worried eye to his captain, knowing that there was bad blood between Captain Blaylock and Lewrie already.

"We'll explain, once in hailing distance," Lewrie said, though feeling that he was in for a "cobbing," no matter what he did.

Boom-boom-boom-b'boom. The drums began once more, now that the punishing guns, the ones that struck from nowhere, had ceased. A shot sounded, a thin and weak crack! from a lone musket. A desultory spatter of two more, a gust of gunfire, then the field guns began to bark anew. There was a massive shout, a challenging roar that caused a blizzard of musketry in reply, and then things fell silent again.

"Flag's waving!" Wandsworth's deputy, Scaiff, pointed out.

"Need us again, I expect. My my," Wandsworth grieved wearily.

"Your midshipman fellow's runnin' off inland," Scaiff said.

"Who? What?" Lewrie snapped, returning to the starboard side. "What the Devil? He's takin' a horse!"

"Into the woods. Curious," Scaiff said, yawning. "That rum ye issue, Captain Lewrie? Could a poor soldier get a taste? I'm dry as dust."

"Aye, go forrud and tell the Purser you want a tot," Lewrie muttered, intent with his spyglass on the doings ashore, wondering why young Nicholas would go dashing off towards the trenchworks so suddenly.

"Water, sir?" Aspinall offered, coming onto the quarterdeck.

"God, yes, thankee," Lewrie said, turning to accept a tall mug and drain half of it in one gulp.

"Fresh batch, sir. Good an' cool from the orlop."

"Quite fine, quite fine," Lewrie answered, sighing with contentment, and relief. His mouth had been as dry as a private soldier's, a man who'd been biting off cartridges all day. " Toulon 's hiding down below, I take it?"

"Down in the midships hold, sir. Like he always does. Poor ol' puss, the guns scare him somethin' pitiful," Aspinall chuckled.

The sound of gunfire in the forest erupted again, louder this time, more sustained and urgent, the volleys of two-ranked soldiers on top of each other as fast as they could load, the artillery crashing a steady tolling up and down the lines.

And men were running down the short streets of the town to the docks, men in red coats bearing weapons, but bearing the corners of a series of blankets, too… jogging along as fast as they could, with wounded! Thirty or so sentries who had been guarding the diminishing piles of stores were massing, led by a sword-waving officer who looked very much like that Major James who had come aboard earlier, and were trotting double-time the other direction, into the forest.