C H A P T E R 9

How did it go ashore, sir?” Lieutenant Scott asked when Lewrie came back aboard Zélé from headquarters.

“Routed ’em, thank God,” Alan replied sleepily, too sleepy to be enthused. “O’Hara’s aide-de-camp was crowing merry. Six hundred Frogs dead or wounded, he said. We lost sixty-one or so.”

“Bloody good odds, then,” Scott crowed in his turn. “And damned good return on investment.”

“They think the Frogs threw an entire corps against us,” Lewrie yawned. It was barely first light, and a chill mist hung over Toulon. He’d been roused long before his usual hour—nothing new in the Navy—but with a bit more urgency than usual, too urgent to allow him his morning tea or chocolate or a morsel of bread. “Think of it, a whole corps! That’s what . . . three divisions? Nine or ten thousand? If we’d lost Fort Mulgrave, we’d have lost the whole of the Heights of de Grasse and both the forts by the Gullet. Then where’d we be, I ask you? If they have that many to throw at us on a whim, then . . .”

“Aye, and we’ll keep on killing ’em, sir,” Lieutenant Scott boasted with his usual scorn for French courage and skill, “at ten or twenty to one. They’ll go bankrupt, wagerin’ at those odds. On a whim.”

“It’s too early to argue the toss,” Lewrie sighed. “Have we anything hot yet?”

“Frog coffee, sir,” Scott scoffed. He was a tea-and-beer man. When forced to drink coffee prepared in French fashion, he found it a too-hot, too-stout and bitter brew.

“Gittons?” Lewrie called. “Send down to the galley for a mug of coffee for me. I’ll be in the chart space.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Mister Scott, round up Lieutenant de Crillart and the comandante if you’d be so kind. We’ve something new planned for today.”

• • •

“Here, sirs,” Lewrie said, with a jab at the chart with a ruler. “On the east, for a change . . . in the Plaine de la Garde. We hold Forts Malgue and Saint Catherine on the east side of town, the batteries at Cape Brun, the Post of Brun, and little Fort Saint Margaret, about at the midpoint of the coast . . . here, to protect the Bay of Toulon. A few days ago, the Frogs . . . pardonnez moi, Charles . . . the Republicans, under General Lapoype, moved into Fort La Garde and occupied it. And the ridge here, in the middle of the plain behind it. I’m told we had La Garde long enough to ruin it . . . blew its powder vaults, toppled the parapets, disabled the guns there . . .”

“No way to ’old eet, so far from ze ozzer posts, wizout cavalry for ze resupply, hein? ” de Crillart surmised.

“Exactly, Charles,” Lewrie agreed, much more agreeable with his second steaming mug of coffee in his other hand. “We have to resupply all our coastline posts by water, as it is. Well, General Lapoype has guns and mortars in the ruins of La Garde again, and he’s opened on any supply boat he sees. Malgue’s guns don’t have the range to reach that far, and the ridge blocks Saint Catherine’s. The coastal strong points have guns, yes, but they’re sited to fire to seaward, and the garrisons have only field guns . . . regimental six-pounders and such . . . facing inland. Saint Margaret is taking a pounding, too. So, were we to work our way to . . . here, east of Saint Margaret . . . There’s a low spot along the coast road, near this beach. And about a quarter-mile offshore there’s six fathom depth. Stripped as this raft is, we only draw two. More muddy sand that close ashore, and the rocks are smaller, so we’ll have better holding ground.”

“An’, ve observe s’rough zis gap, from ze fighting-tops, oui? ” de Crillart smiled, then translated for Comandante Esquevarre.

“Ze comandante, ’e say alzo, mes amis. . .” de Crillart supplied after a long palaver, “zat ze enemy ’ave très difficulté to attack zose coastal posts, vere ve to destroy zese string of ponts. Deux roads de La Garde, sud of ze ridge. One eez good groun’, direct at ze Saint Margaret, ’ere. Go pas’ Les Savaux, Plan Redon, to ze coast road. Mais ze ozzer, east of ze Plan de Galle, eet go sud, to Notre Dame de Bon Salut an’ ze Chateau des Pradets, zen down to ze Plage de la Garonne.”

“Ahah?” Lewrie inquired.

More palaver back and forth.

“Ah, ze comandante, ’e say, vous-êtes sailors, mais ’e eez soldat. ’E see what vous do not. Zey place batteries on ze heights near ze Notre Dame de Bon Salut, an’ to ze west . . . zey comman’ ze Bay of Toulon. Non sheep enter or leave ze bay. Zey shoot into ze Great Road.”

“Ah,” Lewrie said with slow comprehension. “That does put a different light on things.”

“But, ’e say,” Lieutenant de Crillart continued with a sly grin, “zere are le Petit Pont, ’ere. Groun’ eez . . . mmm, ’ow you say . . . ?”

“Marshy,” Scott offered with an impatient grunt.

“Ah, oui, marshy! Merci, m’sieur Scott. Deux bridges, zen road cross zis stream on a s’ird . . . anozzer bridge cross marshy . . . marsh, zen a fift’, ware ze sud road cross ze la Reguana Reever. Comandante Don Luis, ’e weesh to use ze mortars on zese bridges, aussi. After ve bombard ze Fort La Garde.”

“So if they mean to move their army against Toulon, they’d have to come direct west, right into the teeth of our fire, or try to skirt past the end of the ridge and face the guns of Fort Saint Margaret, on their flank, while they’re all strung out?”

“Ze Comandante do not believe zey do zis, mon capitaine. ’Ere are ze reever, an’ ze stream, zey mus’ still cross, on ze good road to Plan Redon, zen turn west across Pont de la Clue. But zat ees covered by Fort Malgue, Post de Brun, Saint Margaret . . .” Charles shrugged in heavy, Gallic fashion, with a snort of amusement to show how hopeless an endeavour that might be.

“Comandante, just to do a complete bit of work, why don’t we blow this Pont de la Clue whilst we’re at it, today? Last of all?” Alan suggested. To which, after a translation, Don Luis was quick to express his agreement.

“Cony?” Lewrie called out the door to the gun deck.

“Aye, sir?”

“How’s the fog?”

“Thicker’n London, sir,” Cony answered, after a weather-wary eye at the sky. “But, ’ere’s a wind comin’ up, sir. Not much o’ one, but a breeze. Might blow off, in’n ’our’r two, sir. I c’n see ’bout two musket shot’z all.”

“That’d be just enough visibility for us to warp out and row,” Lewrie speculated, tossing away his ruler and dividers. “Sound our way down to the entrance in the log boom, then set course through the Gullet. Hug the coast all the way, so they won’t even know we’re in place until the first shell. Let’s be at it, then. Cony, my respects to the bosun, and he’s to sound ‘All Hands.’ Stations for leaving harbour.”

“I think I can see now,” Lewrie enthused, aloft in the fore-top. It had been hours before they could make anything out farther off than a quarter-mile, and had more felt their way east, than anything else. But they had Zélé anchored now in four fathoms of water, east of Saint Margaret in a little cove where the Hieres Road ran close along cliffs which were much lower than the rest of that daunting coast, where that road dipped between two hills into a depression. “That’s it, I think.”

“Has to be La Garde, sir,” Lieutenant Scott muttered, spying the place out with his own telescope. “Now the fog’s burned off enough . . . sure to be. The only hill west of the ridge. Circular central keep, with four arms and circular ends. Just clear enough . . .”

Scott traded his telescope for a sextant and slate.

“I make it a mile and three-quarters, sir,” he concluded. “And it appears we’re anchored broadside-to.”

Lewrie looked at his watch: quarter ’til ten in the morning and nothing stirring yonder, due to the fogs. The French had been blinded as effectively as everyone else on such a gloomy morning. There was a wind up now, from the sou’west, blowing into the cove quite briskly, and rattling a chop against the base of the cliffs, ruffling wavelets over the wide, shingly beach to their right. A wind which would blow their powder smoke away quickly, making it difficult for the French to discover their position. It might even take them awhile to find that it wasn’t a new mortar battery installed at Fort Saint Margaret itself!

“Let’s give it another quarter-hour, Mister Scott. Let Don Luis have a peek at it, and then we’ll open fire,” Lewrie decided.

“Aye, sir. I’ll fetch him.”

By the time Don Luis de Esquevarre, his aspirante, and sergeant-gunner Huelva had ascended the mast, though, the fog had been blown clearer. Fort La Garde was no longer nebulous, but sharp-edged in the telescopes, and Don Luis was eager to open upon them at once, pleading that it would take hours to further reduce the place. It was a masonry fort, after all!

“Bueno,” Lewrie grinned, clapping Esquevarre on the shoulder. “We begin, Don Luis. Sí. Fuego. ”

Lewrie went back to the deck by a standing backstay while Comandante Esquevarre and his aides had to use the lubber’s hole in the top and clamber down the ratlines and shrouds with lands-men’s clumsiness. A full ten minutes was spent inspecting safety precautions, just to be sure no one had omitted a step in the drill due to overfamiliarity or boredom. The gun deck was running with water from the pumps, the companionway to the orlop was trickling sea water, the magazine passage was wetted down from overhead to decking, the felt screen was soaked, the hides were up in the laboratory aft . . . Only four kegs of powder were aft to fill shells at any one time, the excess covered with wet haircloth, the fuse chest covered except for extraction of the called-for timing. Thirty-two pounder great-guns empty and tompioned, bowsed up to the port sills, and only two sets of slow match burning in the mortar well, properly guarded.

“Garguen los morteros,” Esquevarre ordered. “Garguen a bombardear.”

The left-hand mortar was prepared, the touch hole reamed out and primed with fine-mealed powder. The tallow seal was scraped off the top end of the fuse. “Fósforo . . . preparado . . . fuego!”

Another day of noise and smoke had begun.

“Over . . . and left, sir!” Mister Midshipman Spendlove shouted down from the fore-top. “At the foot of the hill!”

“Close, for a first try,” Lewrie beamed, as the aspirante told his commander what that meant in Spanish. Esquevarre fiddled with the traverse a touch, cranked in a tiny change in elevation for the right-hand mortar whilst the left hand was being thoroughly swabbed out. Up came a powder charge. Out came a fixed shell.

“Fósforo . . . preparado . . . fuego!”

Blam went the world, loud as thunder at one’s elbow, rocking the floating battery so hard it felt like she’d been hit with a substantial slab of cliff.

“On target! Right in the center, sir!” Spendlove screamed with delight. “Spot-on! Yayy, give ’em another!”

“Carry on, sir,” Lewrie laughed. Damme, but we’ve gotten main-good at this service, he thought smugly, going to the ratlines to go aloft to enjoy the morning’s work.

With French and British help to do the carrying, they got into a rhythm of one shell a minute. It took the French at least ten to even begin to respond, and their first shots in reply were directed at the closest coastal fort, Saint Margaret, just as Lewrie had thought. And he didn’t think the small garrison there enjoyed being taken for the goat.

Within an hour of hot practice, the fire from La Garde began to slack off. It had been furious for a while, shells dropping all over on the cliffs, on either side of the saddle between the hills, probing far afield, into the cove and upon the beach as they shot over initially.

Then the first shell came singing overhead with a whistling moan. It landed far out to sea, perhaps half a mile away, to splash a feather of spray, then burst. A minute later there came a second, also an over, more off the bows, to their right, but closer in.

“They’re correcting to our smoke,” Lewrie sneered to Spendlove as yet a third shell followed the same path, and blew up close to shore but far to the right, almost dead on their bows. The wind was veering, more from the west now, ragging their stupendous powder pall eastward, lower to the water before it collided with the back eddies off the bluffs, so it might appear to the French that a gunboat was hidden in a cove even farther east, where it at last arose beyond the lip of the cliffs.

“Just as long as they can’t see our fore-top, sir?” Spendlove inquired, full of good cheer. Nothing tremulous to that young man’s tone!

“It’s barely over the saddle, e’en so, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie chuckled. “And with no topmast standing?”

“Preparado . . . fuego!” BLAM!

They turned to the next fall-of-shot. Three thousand eighty yards they were firing: twenty-seven seconds of flight time for a shell, with a quim-hair less than a six-inch fuse, and four drams shy of twenty pounds of powder down the chamber of the mortar. Zélé was shuddering like a kicked hound to each shot. In the fore-top that resulted in a shock, then a sway, judders so short and sharp it felt like the mast was going to be kicked out of its step far below on the keel.

“Twenty-five . . . twenty-six . . . twenty-sev . . . hit!” Spendlove said with glee, as he had every shot of the morning, hit or miss.

Brumm! La Garde groaned, as a section of tumbled wall was blown out, massive blocks of masonry sent flying like so many rooks, scared from one gleaning to the next by a farmer’s fowling piece. Dirty rags of smoke gushed out behind them, gunpowder-tan at first, then darkening as other things began to burn in the aftermath of a magazine strike to grow to a spreading, wind-flattened pillar of smoke worthy of a burning city.

And a shell splashed down behind Zélé, out to sea on her starboard side. But close enough to rock her when the fuse burned down underwater and made it explode as it sank to the rocky bottom.

“Found us,” Lewrie frowned. “Well, it only took the clowns over an hour, this time. That may have been their parting shot, though.”

Esquevarre kept on throwing a shell a minute at La Garde. Once more, though, there was a shell thrown back—two, in fact. One burst on the beach, scooping up a hail of gravel to add to its shattered iron cloud of shrapnel. Rocks and metal slivers pattered in a rain into the sea between the beach and the larboard bows. The second shell struck in the middle of the cove, equally between their floating battery and shore. And even on the fore-top, Lewrie and Spendlove were doused by spray.

“’Bout time to shift anchorage, Mister Spendlove. Lay below to the deck. Inform Mister Scott he is to ready the ship to hoist anchors, and for the comandante to secure his guns.”

“Aye, sir,” Spendlove replied crisply, then, agile as a monkey, took a stay in a hopeful, but sure, leap and slithered down, half sliding to the deck, hand-over-hand.

There were sharp noises, more bangs. For a moment, Lewrie thought that Fort Saint Margaret had opened fire with her sixand twelve-pounders, to delude the French; though with the harsh pounding they’d taken earlier, he rather doubted they’d be that charitable. There was a splash, about the bows.

The bows? he frowned. And no explosion? Solid-shot!

He looked east, toward Notre Dame de Bon Salut.

There! A wisp of powder smoke. It hadn’t come from the arrow-tipped bluff above the beach, the Lord be praised, but farther east on the coast road, just where it began to crest the eastern hill, firing from defilade. Sure enough, another shot erupted from what he took to be at least an eight-pounder. And Fort Saint Margaret’s shot moaned overhead in reply, to strike flinty, gravelly soil and leap and bound in deadly ricochet around it, puffing up clumps of dust at every touching.

“Damned right, we’re shifting anchorage!” he groaned to himself. “We’re getting out of here!” A second eight-pounder now opened alongside the first.

There was a moaning in the sky, the skree of a heavy shell on its way into the cove from La Garde. Lewrie stopped, with one hand on the standing-backstay, to see a second slow in its upward flight, to stand still in the air as a tiny black mote for a split second, then dash to invisibility again. Hadn’t he heard, if you could see it, it was dead on, and . . . ?

With a sick premonition, he looked down to the deck, where Comandante Esquevarre was looking up as well, his face blanched, even under the grime of gun soot. Then the gun deck disappeared.

They struck Zélé, right in the mortar well. A shell must have been in the well, fixed and ready to be loaded. A powder charge, too, nearly twenty-pounds worth, free of its leathern cylinder, wrapped only in an easily ignited paper cartridge. There were two sharp explosions in one, almost atop each other, and a hail of splinters howled around him, blown upwards to spatter into the bottom timbers of the fighting-top!

Lewrie leaned back quickly, throwing himself flat, feeling wood jump beneath his belly, as smoke gushed up the lubber’s hole, and the foremast shuddered and groaned. He started to rise, but fell flat at the second skree. That was the one he’d seen stopping, he hadn’t even seen the first that took the well, he . . .

Another crash aft. No explosion. He turned his head to look and saw a star-shaped hole in the rear of the quarterdeck, right through the tough planking and beaming of what had been an upper gun deck . . . into the filling room! If it . . .

BLAM!

Timbers flew, heavy beams shattered, and wood splinters mixed with jagged iron splinters. More groanings and wood shrieks. And men crying out in pain and fear. The mizzenmast toppled forward, shorn off at its base, furled and gasketed sails smouldering, and rigging lines burning like slow match. Toppled forward by the force of the blast aft, draping itself over the larboard gangways, crushing them with its weight, that amputated trunk thrown forward of its stump!

Lewrie rose, saw that the standing-backstay was still firm, and slithered down to the deck through a fog of gunsmoke. And the smell of burning wood. Somewhere, they had a fire. Old and baked as their floating battery was, she’d go up like kindling, and soon.

“Where away?” he called to the first person he met, grabbing at the fellow’s arm. The man howled with pain. That arm was cooked raw and black, still sizzling with embedded powder embers.

“Mon dieu, mon dieu!” The man staggered away, half his clothes blown off, screaming with terror and the agony of his burns.

“Scott? Crillart?” Lewrie shouted above the din. “Spendlove?”

“Ici, mon capitaine,” Crillart shouted back, emerging from the smoke. “Ze chambre de fille. . . zere is très feu! Ze shells stored . . .”

They both ducked as another tremendous blast erupted aft, this time with ragged, hungry flames licking upwards from the second great rent torn in the quarterdeck.

“Scott?” Lewrie demanded, taking de Crillart by both arms.

“I do not know,” de Crillart replied, shaky but determined.

“Get the men over the side, Charles. She’ll blow sky-high, soon as the fire reaches the main magazine. I don’t think we can save her.”

“Oui, Alain, elle est morte, pauvre Zélé. Alors, mes amis! Nous abandonnons! Anglais! Ve abandon ship! Espagnole, el barco abandonar!”

There were not many Spanish gunners left alive to obey that command. Lewrie coughed on the smoke, looking down into the ruin of the mortar well. Sergeant Huelva, the aspirante, Esquevarre and the match-men, the loaders . . . there was a ragged hole where the well had been, blown to the base of the orlop, and both mortars had crashed through it. Ruddy sparks glowed down there on the orlop, and greasy smoke coiled upwards. Of the men serving the mortars at the moment of immolation, there was little sign.

“Sir!” Bosun Porter shouted. He and Spendlove skidded to a stop near him. “We goin’ over, sir?”

“Aye, we are,” Lewrie agreed quickly, trying to take a breath to steady himself. What he wanted most of all to do was jump howling over the side that very instant, anything counter to that wish could just be damned, and God help the trampled!

But he was the captain. If they went over the side in a panic, it would be even worse. And there was the fact that he couldn’t swim a stroke! With more courage than he felt he’d ever deserved, he caught that smoky breath, and told his jibbering terror to wait a bit.

“Bosun, gather up oars, spare spars, hatch gratings, whatever is loose. Get it over the larboard side, in the lee, and lash it together. Mats of hammocks, between baulks of timber as floats. Hurry, we don’t have much time. Mister Spendlove, gather some hands to help. Cony!” He bawled.

“’Ere, sir! I’m a comin’!” came a gladsome shout from somewhere forward. He looked singed as he came through the smoke, but Lewrie had never seen a cheerier sight.

“We have to leave her, Cony. We’ll search for survivors first and get them over the larboard side.”

“Got Gracey an’ Sadler, sir, an’ a coupla t’others. Hoy, here be Lisney!”

“How’s it below, Lisney?” Lewrie asked.

“Fires is burnin’, sir. Aft, mostly,” Lisney coughed, hacking and spitting, blowing his nose on his fingers to clear soot from his nostrils and throat. “Transom’s blowd clean out, sir. Ye kin see th’ daylight through ’er. Floodin’ bad.”

“So we sink before the orlop magazine catches fire?”

“They’s fires on th’ orlop ’neath us, now, sir,” Lisney cried between retches. “Nothin’ big yet, but . . . after half, I reckon. Me’n th’ gunner, an’ ’is powder yeomen? Jus’ come back. Too smoky t’see wot y’r doin’. ’Ey soaked th’ made-up charges an’ kegs good, long’z we ’ad water runnin’ in th’ ’ose, sir.”

“We have to go below,” Lewrie announced, chilling himself at his words, seeing the shiver of fear and awe reflected in his men, at what he was asking them to do. “There’s gear below that’ll float, lads. We need it. And, we have to check the magazine. Mr. Spend-love, inform Lieutenant Crillart where we’re going, and have him round up as many as he can to assist the bosun. Then, see if you can find Lieutenant Scott. Right, men . . . after me. Let’s go.” Bloody daft, I am, he told himself; daft as bats!

But they followed him below, that clutch of shuddering men; went staggering down the companionway ladders into smoky darkness to gather up stools and armfuls of tightly rolled hammocks, which might make temporary life buoys before they soaked through. They ripped down partitions and doors from warrant and mates’ cabins, cut down the mess tables hung from the overheads, and handed them up, looted the unused carpenter’s stores for baulks and planks of dry timber.

Lewrie forced himself to enter the magazine, crouched low under the coiling smoke, coughing his lungs out, even so. The felt screen in the doorway was still wet and cool, the door slimy with water. Farther aft, the wooden bulkheads were only slightly warm yet. He felt over a pile of paper cartridges, sickly slick and tacky with water. He worked in the dark—Bittfield, their senior gunner’s mate, had extinguished all the lanterns in the glassed-in light room which usually illuminated the magazine. Lewrie’s feet slipped and slid in a slurry of wet gunpowder, gritty but soaked. He almost wet himself when he realised it. Normally, only felt or list slippers could be worn in the magazine to avoid sparks; no matter how careful the yeomen of the powder were, a small amount always spilled, and one scrape of shoe leather could set it off like a bomb! He heard trickling water.

God, yes! Forward there was a tin-lined water tank, used by the galley to fill the steep-tubs to simmer rations, and as a fire reserve. Bittfield had axed his way through the overhead planking and punctured it, hang the risk of a spark when his steel axehead had bitten into it. The tank was slowly emptying itself into the magazine, gurgling in shoe-heel deep. He felt the massive kegs in the dark. They were wet to the touch. Though Lewrie felt his “nutmegs” had shriveled up to the size of capers, he decided that the magazine would be safe just long enough for them to get away before it blew. There was double-banked timber on all sides, top and bottom, which would only smoulder and char . . . for awhile.

His hideous duty done, he quite happily fled.

“All clear, sir,” Lisney coughed and wheezed at him when he came forward to the companionway, where there was at least the hope of air and a little light. Lisney was fuming that he’d taken so long, that he could not flee himself until Lewrie did.

Can’t say that I blame him, Alan thought.

“Hatchets,” Lewrie barked, between coughs. “Take the ladders, too. Break ’em loose, then we’ll haul ’em up after us.”

“Aye, sir,” Lisney whined, impatient to be away. “Hoy, lads!”

It was a matter of seconds to break the ladders free, to scamper to the gun deck, then sling them upward and to the side. Lewrie followed them to the larboard side, the lee, and looked over. There was no more he could do. It was time to go.

“Half of ’em sir,” Spendlove wailed, standing on the fore-chain platform, clinging to taut stays. “They just lit out for the beach, and I couldn’t stop them! Didn’t wait to help, or . . .”

“It’s alright, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie said, peeling off his uniform coat. “They can’t help it.”

He swung a leg over the bulwarks and stepped down beside Spendlove, on the chain platform. It was only eight or so feet more to the water, but it looked one hellish-far drop. Terrified as he’d been down in the magazine, well . . . it didn’t hold a candle to this!

No wonder they lit out, he shuddered, taking a look aft along the floating battery’s side. She was slightly down by the stern, and fires raged unchecked aft, snarling like famished dogs over the forward edge of the quarterdeck, beginning to eat at the gangways on either beam, and the after-half of the gun deck was sizzling with low sheets of flamelets.

And shells were still falling from Fort La Garde, bursting above her, splashing down all about the cove, close aboard. One came down in a knot of swimmers and paddlers, clinging to any old sort of flotsam by the beach. Up rose a pillar of water, mud, gravel . . . men, or pieces of men; broken coop crates and bits of timber. When the feather collapsed, there weren’t four heads to be seen still afloat!

“Mister Scott, sir,” Spendlove cried, tears running on his face.

“Yes?” Lewrie asked, staring at the sea below him with foreboding.

Dear God, if I can’t find something solid to cling to . . . ! Alan shuddered.

“ Dead, sir!” Spendlove shouted, as if in accusation. “Blown to . . . dear God, sir, there were bits of him, scattered . . .” He pointed aft to the raging furnace of the quarterdeck, where Scott would have taken himself, to ready Zélé to up-anchor. Spendlove’s shirtfront was wet with breakfast, his terrified reaction to his first dead men.

Lewrie could but nod at that sad news, more concerned with surviving himself at that moment, gazing like a hypnotised rabbit under a snake’s steely glare, at the sea. Hungry waters lapped and gurgled with what sounded like glee against the side, as if they’d been waiting for him for a very long time.

“See to the men, Mister Spendlove. Get as many ashore as you can,” he ordered. “Be calm. They’ll need that.”

“Aye, sir,” Spendlove gulped, fighting back his own fears.

Waistcoat too, I s’pose, Lewrie surmised; good broadcloth, it’ll soak up water like a sponge. He peeled it off and cast it away. Lewrie undid the buckle of his neckstock and lace front to toss them away, too. This day, he wore old cotton stockings, his worst-stained pair of cotton breeches, the working pair he’d had run up out of sailcloth.

It struck him that they were French, and he giggled.

Serge de Nîmes, they called the fabric . . . sailcloth. Bloody Frogs invented it, didn’t they? But he could not recall what the French called “sails.” Vela? No, that was Latin.

Weak and shuddering, feeling a bit faint at his prospect of drowning, chilling all over, feeling his knees buckling, and his death grip on the stay slipping, he imagined he was already a spirit, a shade, freed of his body’s mortal husk, outside of himself and distanced from the world. His ears were ringing, not from an excess of noise but from an almost total lack of sound. A shell burst, its fuse wrongly selected, right over the bluffs, and he could barely hear its barking Crack!

“Sir, sir!” from far away. “Mister Lewrie, sir! ’Old on, Mister Lewrie, I’m acomin’!”

And there was Cony, paddling and treading water at his feet. So far below, though!

“Got ya somethin’ t’ ’ang onta, sir,” Cony promised. There was a small, rectangular hatch grating from a limber hole off the orlop deck, a bar to intruders who had no business secreting themselves in the dark recesses of the bilges or the carpenter’s walks; cross-hatched of wood two-by-four, with ventilation squares. “It’ll float like anythin’, sir! Ya gotta jump on down, Mister Lewrie. I’ll be right ’ere, no worries.”

“Ah . . .” Lewrie said, grimacing with fear that looked like a grin.

“She’s burnin’ damn’ fierce, Mister Lewrie, she’ll blow sky-high any minute now,” Cony insisted, swiping water and soaked flaxen hair out of his eyes. “Ever’body else’z off ’er, sir, ain’t no reason t’stay no longer. Come on, sir!”

Lewrie sat down on the fore-chain platform, easing his buttocks to the edge, his toes dangling, terror-breaths whooshing in and out, as if the next would be the last.

“God love ya, Mister Lewrie, sir,” Cony coaxed, his face crimped with worry. “All these years t’gether, I don’t mean t’lose ya now. Wot I tell y’r good lady an’ y’r kiddies, if I went an’ lost ya? Come on, sir! ’Old y’r nose an’ slide off! I’ll be right by y’r side, swear it by Jesus, I do, sir!”

Well . . . he sighed. He clapped his cocked hat firmly on his head, took a deep breath, held his nose, compressed his lips, took one last fond look at the bluffs—and let go of the stay.

He fell, he splashed like a cannon ball, arrowing down . . . down, and down, wanting to scream, blinded by brine, forever lost, lungs aching, wishing he’d taken a deeper breath, deep enough to last forever . . .

“Shit!” he yelped as he broke surface, felt light and air on his face, felt Cony’s hand on his shirt collar. Retching and coughing from smoke, from water in his mouth, his eyes, weeping with salt-water sting and pure, semi-hysterical relief.

“Grab ahold o’ this, sir, there ya be, safe’z ’ouses,” Cony cooed, and Lewrie flailed about until his hands seized the hatch grating, took it to his bosom trying to get his whole chest over the twoby-three foot grating. Feeling it wobble under him, threatening to tip him over.

“Shit!” he reiterated.

“’Ang on, sir, jus’ th’ edge, t’keep y’r ’ead ’bove water, an’ . . .” Cony instructed. “That’s better, sir. You jus’ ’ang on, an’ I’ll tow.”

“Lost my hat,” Lewrie carped, prying one stinging eye open.

“Hat’s no matter, Mister Lewrie,” Cony laughed. “Gotta get shed o’ y’r sword, sir.”

“No!” Lewrie insisted, almost petulantly.

“Drag ya down, do ya slip an’ let go, sir,” Cony explained.

“No!” Lewrie growled, groping fearfully for the scabbard which dangled between his legs. He dragged it around to lie athwart the grating before his eyes, then resumed his death grip.

“’Ere we go then, sir,” Cony fretted, beginning to side-stroke and tow. “Do ya kick y’r legs, sir? Push like ya wuz aclimbin’ real steep stairs, that’d help. Y’ll get the ’ang of it.”

Once away from Zélé ’s side, out of her lee, they met the wind, which helped propel them into the cove, toward the beach. Grunting as he gyrated his legs in an unfamiliar motion, he could begin to feel each tiny thrust as he clung to his raft, gagging and spitting with the water just under his chin, and wavelets slopping over his shoulders, to his ears at times, from behind. Halfway there, he lost his right shoe, no matter how he’d crimped his toes to keep it.

There were dead in the water, men floating face-down with their long hair come undone from tarry queues, fanned out like tentacles from flattened jellyfish. And bits and pieces of men who’d been torn apart by one of those underwater shell-bursts. Cony thrust their way through a bobbing assortment of broken barricoes, stubs of lumber, jagged, still smoking planks and ship’s beams. Here an abandoned hammock, inches under but still afloat, there a man who’d drowned even with two rolled hammocks about his chest. Coils of loose rope, swaying upwards for the sun like sea snakes he’d seen in the China Seas.

Sharks! he quailed, to himself, grimly pushing and kicking, finding a rhythm at last with Cony’s towing strokes. Bloody hell, I’ve seen ’em, every shipwreck, every battle, looking for survivors . . . Some bit of half-submerged flotsam touched his bare foot and he all but screamed, biting his sword belt to keep from unmanning himself.

Rumblings, distant earthquake quivers in the water, pressure he could feel squeezing on his stomach and lungs. Groans and cries astern. He dared turn his head to look, and saw Zélé with two-thirds heartily burning, the foremast toppling slowly, great gouts of bubbles foaming around her as she settled lower and lower. Her stern was probably already on the rocky bottom, he thought, with waves burbling around her great-cabin windows. She at least would not have far to go, not in four fathoms, and she drew two; she’d lay awash, until everything above that new waterline had charred to crumbly coals.

“Right, sir,” Cony said cheerfully, “we’re here. Hit me knee on a rock.” He left off side-stroking and stood up, waist-deep. Alan was not that brave—he thrust with his legs until he was past Cony before he groped for the bottom with his feet. When he at last stood up, he’d reached thigh-deep water. And he was cold.

“Christ,” he sighed, beginning to shiver, his teeth to chatter as that brisk November wind found every water-logged inch of him. Immersed, it hadn’t felt quite so bad. His legs below the surface were warmer.

“Lucky we wuz so near th’ beach, sir, else we’da froze up solid an’ gone under,” Cony said, hugging himself to still his own shiverings.

“Cony, I . . .” Lewrie blushed. “Thankee, Will Cony. Thankee.”

“Aw, sir,” Cony shrugged modestly as they splashed through tiny surf-rushes onto the gravel of the beach. “Weren’t . . . well, sir. After all this time, I’d not care t’be servin’ another officer. So I ’spect it’d be better t’save th’ one I’m usedta.”

“Whatever reason, Cony . . . my hand on’t,” Lewrie offered, shaking Cony’s paw vigorously. “I’m in your debt. Damme, if I ain’t.”

“All these years, sir . . . well, I swore I wouldn’t lose ya. An’ so I didn’t. Thankee, sir. Thankee kindly.”

“Now, let’s see what we have left,” Lewrie said, breaking free, feeling a tad uncomfortable over such a close and affectionate display of emotion toward another man. Even one who’d just saved his life.

There wasn’t much. Crillart and his gunners were grouped off to one side, only about half the number Lewrie had recalled, trying to put names to half-known faces, trying to dredge up the identity of missing men. Of Spaniards, there were only four still alive. Spendlove, Porter and Lisney were huddled together in a group. He still had Preston and Sadler, Gracey, Gittons . . . there was Gunner’s Mate Bittfield . . .

“Bosun?” he called. “Taken a muster?”

“Aye, sir,” Porter nodded, in a daze still. “Nothin’ to write on, sir, I . . .”

“Later,” Lewrie agreed, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’ll sort it out later. Stout fellow, Porter. To get as many as you did ashore.”

“Oh, aye, sir . . . thankee,” Porter straightened, bucking up.

Lewrie undid the knee buckles of his breeches, letting a minor flood of sea water escape down his shins. He pulled up his stockings from his ankles, where they’d settled. And winced as he plodded across the rough shingle of the beach. Lock-jaw fever was so easy to die of, he couldn’t recall a time he’d ever gone barefoot, even as a child.

There was a muffled boom from Zélé as part of her soggy powder at last took light in the magazine, a dull whoomph, accompanied by a spurt of smoke from her gun ports. She’d settled now, with only her upper bulwarks and gangways, her jib boom and quarterdeck above the surface. The fires had abated, with too little dry timber to feed on. She fumed now like a slag heap in Birmingham, the smoke thin and bluish like burning autumn leaves.

It struck Lewrie suddenly that he had just lost everything. His sea chest had gone down with her. All his clothes, books, a career-span of official documents and letters, orders and . . .

His two pairs of pistols, shoes, stockings, homemade preserves he had packed, that Caroline had put up. His dressing gown no one liked.

Christ, her letters! he groaned. And the miniature portrait, and Sewallis’s crude first drawings, Hugh’s messy handprints from the latest post . . . that juju bag, too. Lucy Beauman had had one of her family slaves make it . . . a “witch” to keep him safe from the sea, long ago when he was ashore on Antigua, recovering from Yellow Jack. He hadn’t really worn it in ages, but to lose it. Yet . . .

“Fat lot of good it did me, after all,” he whispered. “I got ashore without it.”

Hurtful as his losses were, the one that really stung was that, for all his vows to keep his sailors alive, come what may, he’d lost some of them—he’d failed. And, for the first time in his career, he had lost a ship.