C H A P T E R 9

Soldiers gathered to larboard, huddling below on the gun deck or hunkered down behind the bulwarks, on their knees. Aristocrats in the tops, cautioned to clear the enemy’s foredeck; rifled hunting guns loaded and primed. Once again, Lewrie deplored his stupidity, dearly wishing he had but three light swivel guns aloft, one in each fighting-top, to spew clouds of pistol-ball or langridge.

Lieutenant de Crillart was amidships in the waist, his gunners low to the deck behind the guns of the larboard battery, which had been run-in, charged and shotted, primed, and run-out to the port sills, double-shotted with their few precious grape-shot loads atop solid-shot, with the powder monkeys ready with only one more cartridge bag, the gunners ready with only two more round-shot for a second double-shotted broadside, before they’d abandon their guns, take up small arms, and board.

It was a slender hope, he knew, a tenuous, neck-or-nothing act of desperation, no matter how enthusiastically he had couched his plan to the others. He paced to the windward bulwarks of the quarterdeck, studying his command, looking astern at the French corvette. She was now within two hundred yards of Radical ’s stern, banging away with her starboard bow-chaser about once a minute, and employing her two forrudmost main-battery eight-pounders which could be crowed or levered about to bear. Whilst his own gunners had been reduced to the single twelve-pounder in the great-cabins of the larboard battery, and the lone eight-pounder stern-chaser to larboard, as well.

The frigate? He turned to look to the north, downwind. There she was, overhauling the trailing transport at last, gunsmoke shrouding her side, the transport attempting to shoot back. But too far off to even hear the reports of their guns.

The corvette, again—perhaps twenty yards closer, up to wind-ward by about a single musket-shot.

“Quartermaster? Nothing more to loo’rd,” he called. “Begin to luff up, spoke at a time. Very slowly.”

He heard the clinking of bottles somewhere.

Damned good idea, he thought; someone’s thinking. Liquor your boots for this madness. And wishing he had a glass of something, too.

“Sir?” Cony called to him from the waist.

“Aye, Cony?” He forced himself to grin, going forward to look at his long-time man. “Bloody Hell, Cony, there a dram left for me?”

Will Cony held an entire armful of squat port bottles, swaying a bit more than the sea demanded, as if he’d been into all of them. With him was an older French gunner, who bore a short, smouldering linstock with slow match coiled about its length, and laid in the top fork.

“Nary a drop, sir, sorry,” Cony laughed. “Me an’ Monsooer Ahnree, here . . . sorta sampled it, like.”

“Sampled, aye, you rogue,” Lewrie scowled.

“Aye, sir . . . sampled. But poured h’it overside, mostly. Sir, do ya ’member Spratly Island, sir? Them pirates’ wine bottles, an’ th’ whale oil we foun’?”

“God’s sake, Cony, we don’t wish to burn her!”

“Nossir, but Mr. Bittfield, ’e cut me some slow-match fusees, an’ ’twixt us, ’im an’ ’is powder yeomen, we made up some grenadoes. Oncet we’re aboard, sir . . . thought they might come in ’andy.” Cony chortled, quite half-seas-over after his “sampling,” and full of cherry-merry bonhomie. “Mayn’t kill too many, do they work. But they might put th’ wind up ’em, yonder. Keep ’em from rushing th’ foc’s’le too eager.”

“Cony, you’re a godsend. Aye, good thinking,” Lewrie praised. “Wish I’d had half the wits to think of ’em, myself! Go at ’em, man. And Cony?”

“Aye, sir?”

“I expect to see you among the quick, once we’re done. I don’t relish breaking in a new bosun’s mate after all this time, any more’n you . . . well,” Lewrie said, turning sombre. “God go with you, and all good fortune, Will Cony.”

“Same t’yew, sir,” Cony chirped. “B’sides, sir, z’much trouble I’m in back in Anglesgreen? I reckon the Good Lord knows a rogue and a weed when ’E sees one, Mister Lewrie. An’ ’E jus’ might get a laugh outa seein’ me try t’ wriggle, when we gets back ’ome.”

“True enough,” Lewrie laughed, turning back to his worries.

Dear Lord, You know Your weeds, don’t You, Lewrie addressed his Maker silently; You know me for a rogue, already. I’m sorry ’bout my doin’s in Naples. I’m sorry for . . . well, no, I’m not really sorry ’bout Phoebe. Plain truth, Lord? Started out of sympathy—pity for her. Now . . . God save me, I think I’m half in love with the little mort! I fall before the hour’s out—thankee for Caroline, and the children. Look after ’em for me, as best You’re able. And—thankee for Phoebe, Lord. You made a poor rakehell sailor damn’ . . . awfully happy, for a few days. Don’t let any harm come to her. I left a note, should I not be ’mongst the quick when this is over. Let ’em find it, so she could draw on my funds, start over somewhere. Not be . . .

He shook himself all over, lifted his head and took a deep lungful of air to clear his gloomy thoughts. There was the corvette, close now. Less than one hundred yards astern, less than fifty yards up-wind. More of her starboard gun ports were opening as she ran them out to fire. They’d bear now, levered to the forrudmost rims of the gun ports. But even with quoins fully out, breeches hard on the carriages, she’d not be able to shoot high enough to damage rigging or harm the upper decks, as heeled-over as she was by the press of wind. Another advantage to be below her, he took time to gloat, the one thing he had over which he could gloat. These last few minutes of stern-chase they had not been able to fire at anything but his waterline or his stern. Up to windward, the lee guns were always canted too low for good gunnery.

He squatted down as the corvette let fly, even so. Four balls struck almost immediately, thonking into Radical below the quarterdeck. There were screams, womanly cries, grunts of alarm from men. But his ship had taken the corvette’s best fire, and his frigate’s timbers had proven tough enough to hold.

He stood back up, wincing as some French marksmen began to fire with their muskets. A ball whistled past his ears like a bumblebee. Alan ignored it, judging his moment. Lifting his arms slowly, taking in a breath with which to scream . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . !

Now!

“Porter!” he bawled, feeling faint and dizzy with the effort he put into his cry. “Scandalise her! Quartermaster, helm hard alee! Ready, the larboard battery! Troops on deck, muster in the waist!”

Round she came, luffing up to windward, yards crying and sails cracking like gun shots, masts groaning and loose gear coming adrift from aloft. The square sails were being brailed up, goose-winged by Spanish reefs, the foresails and jibs’ sheets freed, the braces let ease. Radical slowed quickly, going from a painful struggle to flee to a weak surrender, the sort of rubbery-legged shudder a deer chased to exhaustion might display as it came to a halt at last, tongue lolling and ribs heaving to face the dogs, and its death.

The French corvette stood on for a startled moment, laid as full-and-by as she could lay, as Radical fetched up across her course, under her bows, almost at right-angles to her. She began to swing away, haul her wind, hoping to shave past Radical ’s stern, within spitting distance.

But Lewrie’s borrowed frigate had come up in-irons, dead in the eye of the wind, her square-sail yards purposely thrown all-aback, flat against the apparent wind, then against the true wind, as she groaned to a dead halt in a welter of disturbed water, began to make a slight stern-board!

The corvette’s bowsprit and jib boom came thrusting inward like a lance, soaring over the larboard side, steeved high into the air, almost as high as the main-course yard, just before the main-mast chains. Her sprit’sl yard, crossed beneath her bows but not deployed, tangled in the stays, ripping off, rigging lines parting like pistol shots, timbers moaning in agony as her elaborate beakhead rails were crushed back into her bows, as her cutwater slammed into Radical with a monumental, hollow booming that shook both ships like striking a rocky shoal at-speed!

Everyone was knocked off their feet— Radical shuddered—her side gave way to the impact of nearly four hundred tons of oak and iron striking her almost at right-angles!

“First grapnels, away!” Lewrie howled, getting to his own feet, even without looking. “ Tireurs, there! You marksmen! Tirez! Charles, give her a broadside!”

Radical ’s gunners clambered back to their guns, opened their gun ports, and ran out. Men teamed up on crow levers to shift their charges to aim inward, aiming point-blank at oak scantlings mere feet away, the twelve-pounders far fore and aft laid so canted at their ports they’d snap their breeching ropes. Musketry aloft snapping and cracking, shouts of fear from the French gunners on the foredeck and foc’s’le as lead struck about them, clawing at their wounds as they were picked off before they could get back to serving their guns. Or freeing the flung grapnels.

Then Radical fired her broadside. Twelve hundred feet per second, a ball flew when it left the muzzle of a naval artillery piece. Grape-shot . . . more like a sack of hard iron plums . . . and eighteen-pounder solid round-shot behind that . . . the corvette screamed! Wood cried out as it was blasted away, timbers flew, scantling planking whirled in the air! Thuds and thonks rose from her as her gun deck and mess deck were turned into a pair of bowling pitches, and heavy iron tore through tight-pressed men, overturning artillery on carriages, shivering masts as they struck on the lower trunks. Carline posts, scantling, decks, overhead deck beam timbers broke or were turned by caroming ricochets into jagged clouds of wood splinters, bits and pieces as big as bayonets, flicking quick as birds, quilling sailors and making them cringe or cry in terror.

Lewrie scampered to the larboard gangway above his guns, sword drawn. “Cockerels, to me!” he called, waving his tars to join him at the bulwarks. “Grapnel men? Boarders? Boarders, first! You, too, my man!” he shouted as he espied Cony and his French mate with their port-bottle grenadoes. They came with muskets, pistols, and cutlasses bare and brutally glittering. There was nothing subtle or scientific about cutlasses—they were choppers, not really swords.

“Now, Cockerels . . . ready? Follow me, lads!” he screamed, to left and right. “Boarders! Awwayy, boarderrss!”

They surged across the narrow space, scrambling along the foot ropes and bracing cables below the ruin of the corvette’s jib boom and bowsprit, weapons in one hand and leaping from fore stay to fore stay with the other. Some spryer topmen sprinted down the jib boom, as if running across a wide log footbridge, horny bare feet tough and sure on pine spars and wound-rope doubling bands. All with a hank of white cloth tied round their left biceps over their shirts or jackets, marking an ally for the sharpshooters above.

There was a quick mêlée among the survivors of the bow-chasers’ crews, those who had not already been picked off, or had fled. French sailors were overrun in a twinkling, hacked down with cutlasses or axe heads, a fleet few screaming in terror and scampering over the top of, around the sides of, the petty officers’ heads in the roundhouses of the forward bulkhead.

“Kennedy!” Lewrie shouted from the beakhead platform. “Bring your men, now! Grapnels! We’ll take ’em to the anchor catheads! Be ready with pistols!” he said, drawing the first of a borrowed pair.

He climbed up from the beakhead platform to the foredeck, and the abandoned chase guns, shouldered into the bulkhead, and hopped up for a view, trying to scale it. A French sailor was climbing atop it with a musket in his hands. Eye-to-eye, not a single yard between!

He brought up his pistol cack-handed, snapping it back to full-cock with his sword-hand wrist, leveled and fired. The man’s forehead turned plummy, and the back of his skull was blown out, flinging blood and brains in a sudden rain behind him. His own dying scream was echoed by the men who’d been in his rear, trying to dash forward to repel.

“Up, men!” Lewrie yelled. “Give ’em pistols! Point-blank!”

His men erupted from either side of the bulkhead and the roundhouses, shouldering into rough line and leveling their weapons. Guns went off from both sides. A British sailor was flung backwards with a howl. There was a sharp crack, a cloud of smoke from the far side, and more howls among the French, followed by another light explosion, and the air sang with lead and broken glass! Cony and his grenadoes!

Lewrie got to the top of the bulkhead, crawled across it and looked down onto the forecastle. There were half a dozen dead below, a like number writhing and shrieking . . . but a full two dozen running forward toward him. Muskets crackled near his ears, making them ring, and a few of the French skidded or tumbled to a halt, the ones behind tripping over them, and coming to a stop. Lewrie drew his second pistol, glanced left to see a reassuring flash of red uniform coat. The Irish had made it across!

The French took pause, confused by the sight of British Red, a heartbeat standing still. Then the corvette was quaking to a second broadside, and the men below were scythed away by raking fire, as more iron bowled and caromed the length of her gun deck!

“Take the forecastle!” Lewrie pleaded, turning to search for Lieutenant Kennedy. There he was! “Kennedy! Take the forecastle! Right to the railing! Volley and cover us!”

The Irish swept past him, bayonets winking, muskets presented at hip level; about twenty men shuffling into ranks whilst the first brave ten hurriedly reloaded to a clatter of ramrods.

“Grapnels, now! Set ’em to the catheads, behind the troops!”

He took the larboard side, Bosun Porter the starboard, trailing heavy four-inch manila lines across from Radical, heavy-barbed grapnels being carried by seamen. Skulking low, as the French got organized at last, as they picked themselves up amid a welter of blood and smoke, of sensible order overturned. Ignoring the shrieks of men torn in half by iron shards, those quilled like hedgehogs by splinters, or crushed and howling beneath shattered gun carriages, they were advancing, their numbers growing quickly. Musket fire began to buzz around them. Men went down. Lewrie lost his second hat, felt a brush against his scalp, and staggered, as a musket ball clipped the hair above his left ear.

But they had the grapnels set, two wraps about the projecting cathead timbers, then driven deep into the bulwarks. Lewrie could see the strain coming on the lines, lifting them like snakes from the deck and turning them bar-taut. And a look forward showed him de Crillart and some of his regular gunners coming over, with French soldiers in a bunch along Radical ’s gangway, clumsily scrambling for handholds.

“Hurry!” he shouted to them, waving Charles forward. “For God’s sake, hurry ’em over! We can’t hold long!”

Sure enough, there were men dashing along either gangway toward his outmanned boarding party. Porter to starboard had two pistols in his hands, seamen—Royalist French and British—at his back, ready with cutlasses or a few loaded muskets. Lewrie cocked his second pistol and leveled it, glaring down the barrel at the men running directly at him.

Hoping they might flinch. And his own body turned side-on, like a duellist. Hoping he wouldn’t be shot!

“First rank . . . y’r lef’ front!” Kennedy bawled. “Level! Fire!”

Ten men fired by volley, into the head of the pack facing Bosun Porter, taking down five and throwing the rest into confusion, which Porter exploited with a pistol or musket volley of his own.

“First rank, recover and reload. Second rank, y’r right front! Level! Fire!”

Lewrie shot first, taking down a French midshipman, an aspirante who had been brave enough to charge him, until he’d seen the pistol in a dead line with his chest. He’d stumbled to a halt, bringing up his own, getting bowled over by his seamen. The boy’s waistcoat turned red as he was flung backwards by the ball, almost going erect again, before being trampled by the ones behind. Alan brought up his sword, matched blades with a cutlass-swinging petty officer who’d outrun the pack as Kennedy’s soldiers tore gaping holes in the men who’d been slow to follow him. Screams of alarm, of disbelief as men realised they had been shot down, or that they’d been spared whilst a friend had not.

Two, three engagements, clashing steel against steel, high then low, to his left as the petty officer swung again, parrying him off to the right and over his head. Tripping him with his foot and shouldering the burly man off balance. A heartpounding gasp as he leaped back and ran him through, sideways, ducking as the cutlass came swinging at his head, backhanded. But the petty officer going down to his knees, with a death wound below his ribs.

No time to reload, no time to think! Another man, leaping the carnage the 18th had strewn on the gangway, confronted him, an officer for sure, with a smallsword. Up came his bloody blade to ring upon the foe’s. But Lisney was beside him with a cutlass, at the head of the larboard forecastle ladder, making him spin away to confront them both. And Gittons beside Lisney, two more British sailors following them. The officer broke off, beginning to back-pedal, glancing over Lewrie’s head, as if to draw his attention off, now and again.

“Third rank . . . advance to the railings . . . cock y’r locks! And level!” Kennedy was shouting. And there were French shouts, too, of encouragement, coming from the beakheads and bulkhead behind Lewrie.

He advanced with a leap, sure he was being reinforced at last. The French officer was forced to meet his blade, begin the clashing of steel, the thrust, parry and anticipation amid the clatter of metal on metal as if an itinerant tinker band was repairing pots. Hilt to hilt, the Frenchman growling as one of his best overhand thrusts was averted. He leapt back, stamped his foot to advance, fencing-school fashion, and came spiralling in. Lewrie met his blade on the edge of his, about midlength. And the damned thing snapped!

His foe grinned as he cleared his arm for a thrust. Desperately, Alan was on him, right shoulder forward, brawling now instead of fencing, seizing the man’s sword-hand wrist and jabbing him through the throat below his jaw with the ragged stub! Gave him another, lower down in the belly as he sagged against him. Nose to nose, looking into those dying eyes for an instant, jumping back to avoid the rush of gore from his mouth as he tumbled face-down. And taking his sword from him.

“Cockerels!” he bawled, waving his new weapon on high. “To me, lads! Kennedy, take the gun deck! Now! Don’t give ’em time to think!” He turned about to see Louis and his cavalrymen mustering to starboard on the forecastle. “Louis! The gangway! Charge! Et. . . damme! Debarquement! The gangway! Clear it! Porter, show ’im!”

“We ’ave arrive, mon ami, ” Charles de Crillart said breathlessly. He shouted over his shoulder, ordering his gunners to join Porter and Louis on the starboard gangway, as Major de Mariel’s first soldiers came up.

“Join Kennedy and de Mariel, clear the gun deck. I’ll take the larboard gangway. Meet you aft, Charles. Bonne chance. ”

“Oui, bonne chance, Alain,” Charles agreed, drawing his sword.

“Cockerels, let’s go!” Lewrie shouted, advancing.

Kennedy’s 18th Royal Irish, not waiting for de Mariel’s men to take order in their rear, advanced, bayonets leveled, down the ladders to the gun deck, forming up before the foc’s’le belfry in two long ranks across the deck. “Forward, the 18th! Up, the Irish!” Lieutenant Kennedy cried. And they charged. “Hoolooloolooloo!” they screamed, an ancient, pagan Gaelic war cry, full-throated, ululating hatred and slaughter, the wolves of Erin, who had never been conquered by Caesar’s legions; these fierce rejects of that unhappy land. “Hoolooloolooloo!” they bayed. And foes shrank in terror before them.

A continual fusillade of pistol pops, musket reports, screams and wails, the tinny sounds of blades battering against each other. Mêlée and mayhem, a swirling, twisting, nightmare dream of killing, of being killed, of narrowly avoiding death. Down went a man with a boarding pike to Lewrie’s new sword, skewered through the belly. Another blade glittering as it descended toward his outstretched arms. Lisney there to fend it off, to hack the next foe down. Midshipman Spendlove under his arm, to dash forward, dirk in one hand, cutlass in the other, cutting right and left, horizontal. Sweeping the cutlass upward to tear a topman open, stamping and extending his left arm to stab another.

Lewrie sagged against the bulwarks, panting for air, wincing to a cut on his left leg he couldn’t recall receiving, his mouth dry as dust. Looked to his left, saw Chevalier Louis at the head of his thrusting, swinging cavalrymen, popping off with musketoons and pistols. And saw Louis and the three men behind him taken down by a blast from a swivel gun on the quarterdeck! The gunner, leaning far out over the bulwark to fire down the gangway, was shot through the heart the next moment. Below, Irish bayonets jabbing, overhand and underhand, a French sailor with an Irish soldier by the throat, dirk stabbing, all the while his own body rising off the deck, hoisted by three more bayonets. A pistol going off near Kennedy’s head, missing at point-blank range, and Kennedy hewing the shooter down!

Cony’s grenadoes going off, far aft, lofted as far as he could throw them, waiting dangerously long as the fuses burned down, so that they went off in midair, at eye- or waist-level!

And dragging himself back into the fray, as the French sailors began at last to give way, falling back as far as the main chains. Half the corvette was theirs! Slipping and sliding aft along the larboard gangway, stepping over dead men, the cruelly wounded, hacked and chopped open or apart by British sailors going through the whole brutal ballet of the full cutlass drill.

The next minute or so, Lewrie was too busy to ever recall what he’d done, as he slashed and stabbed, fired off a pistol, he thought, once, and took down a bosun’s mate with a musket.

Then he found himself on the enemy’s quarterdeck, a cutlass in his hand, from where, he had no memory. Facing off with an officer in a coat ornately trimmed in gold-lace oak leaves. Clash, slash, stamp . . . return to the balance foot, recover, then stamp and slash down and left, advance, back and right, balance and recover . . . his years as a midshipman and the cutlass drill had never left him . . .

And the man was throwing down his sword, backed up against the double-wheel drum, throat bared, panting hard, with fear in his eyes.

“Strike?” Alan gasped. “Amenez? Vous êtes le capitaine?”

“Oui,” the fellow wheezed, slipping to his knees. “

Amenez-vous? You strike?” Lewrie demanded.

“Oui,” the man nodded weakly, eyes shut and filled with tears.

“Lisney?” Alan called out.

“’E’s dead, sir,” Seaman Gold said at his side, gasping for air himself and bleeding from several scrapes and cuts.

“Take him, Gold. He’s your prisoner,” Lewrie ordered, filled with wonder. He strode aft to the taffrail, cutlass ready should any of the foemen huddled there present a danger. But they threw down all their weapons at his fell approach.

“Cockerels! Mes amis! Quarter! Merci! They’ve struck to us!” he shouted, turning to face the soldiers of the 18th, the Royal French infantry coming up to the quarterdeck. Then took hold of the flag halliard and set it free. Hauled in. And lowered the gigantic Tricolour battle flag to drape below the stern, trailing in the water, over the captain’s stern gallery, in sign of her defeat.

“Cap’m, sir,” Cony summoned, as Lewrie leaned against the taff-rails, feeling utterly spent, woozy and weary beyond belief. “Mister Lewrie, sir? T’is Mister de Crillart, sir. Ya gotta come quick, sir. He’s adyin’, sir, an’ ’e’s askin’ f’r ya.”

Lewrie lowered his head to his knees for a second, took several restoring breaths, then followed. As cheers of victory began to rise, as men opened their mouths to yell to the heavens that they were still alive and able to yell . . . Lewrie found his friend.

Charles de Crillart had been blown almost in half, just as he’d begun to ascend the starboard quarterdeck ladder up from the waist, he had been the first man struck by a load of grape-shot from a swivel gun. His heels still rested over his head on the ladder, the rest sprawled awkwardly . . . brokenly . . . at its foot. His head below his trunk, perhaps, was all that kept him conscious.

“Alain . . .” he muttered weakly, clawing at the deck in agony, as the shock wore off and the pain of his ravaged lower body sank in. His legs were both broken, almost amputated, his belly plumbed by shot.

“Here, Charles,” Alan groaned when he saw him. He could not help sinking to his knees beside him. De Crillart reached out blindly, eyes wavering back and forth as if his sight was already slipping, and Alan took his hand.

“Maman . . . et, ahahh! ” he flinched, trying not to writhe to his intense pain, yet having to, which caused even more. “Maman et Sophie, Alain. I am going, I canno’ aid . . . ahhh!”

He had to bite his lip so hard to keep from crying out, and un-manning himself, that he drew blood.

“Alain, promesse. . . Louis . . .” de Crillart grunted.

“Louis is . . .” Alan said, wondering if he could lie to ease him.

“I see, Alain. I see eem fall. ’E eez . . . ?”

Cony gave his head a negative shake as Lewrie looked up at him.

“Charles, your brother . . . il nous à quittes. He is gone. I’m sorry.”

“Maman et Sophie, zey alone now . . . you mus’ promesse. . .” Lieutenant de Crillart insisted, squeezing Lewrie’s hand so hard he felt his bones grate. He relaxed his grip as the spasm eased, his grip went flaccid, almost slipped from Alan’s grasp for a moment, as his flesh grayed and his lips blued. “See zem to America . . . tak’ care of zem for me . . . I beg you, Alain, plais? Promesse? ” He demanded a little stronger, digging into his last reserve.

“I promise you, Charles,” Alan intoned.

“Promesse, on . . . votre honneur!”

“On my honour, Charles, as an English gentleman . . . as a commission officer in the Royal Navy, I swear to you, I’ll take care of them. I’ll see them someplace safe,” he croaked, blinking back tears.

“Bon,” de Crillart sighed, shrinking away. His hand, as cold as ice, slipped from Lewrie’s hand. “Bon,” he said again, the breath his last, hissing out to rattle in his throat as his eyes glazed over. Alan closed them for him, crossed his arms upon his breast.

“Goddamn,” he whispered, sitting back on his heels.

“Good feller, ’e waz, sir,” Cony said in sympathy.

“So were a lot of men, just died,” Lewrie grunted, chin on his chest. “God help me, Cony, I’m so weak, I . . .”

“Alluz are, sir, after th’ battle’s done. Help ya up, sir?”

“Yes, thankee, Cony.” He got to his feet, swabbing his face on his sleeve. “Many others?”

“Fair number, sir. Mister Porter an’ me, we’re makin’ th’ list.” They began to walk forward through the carnage, making a quick inspection. “ Radical, she’s beat up hellish-bad, sir. Stove in, an’ leakin’, I ’spects. Mister Porter’s been below here, sir, says she come through in good shape, below the waterline. Jus’ looks damn’ bad.”

There were bodies everywhere one looked, pulped, halved, broken and punctured, flopping in death throes, half-buried beneath overturned guns. There the doughty Major de Mariel, then another French soldier. A pair of the 18th, almost arm in arm as they died. A cavalryman hung over the starboard gangway. Men in civilian clothing, with their white armbands, strewn about like slaughtered game birds. But mostly French Republican sailors, thank God—hewn down, hacked down, scythed down by musketry, double-shotted iron, and cutlasses. Moaning, empty-eyed wounded clutching their hurts, sitting on the decks in shock.

There was a cannon shot, a deep-bellied roar.

“Oh, God, no!” Lewrie wailed, losing his rigidly enforced calm. “That bloody frigate!”

He and Cony dashed forward, leaping over obstacles, to ascend to the foredeck where they might have a view. There, close-aboard, was a warship, her pristine masts and yards towering over the two entangled ships. Flying a White ensign and “Do You Require Assistance.” Lewrie waved to her, both arms wide. She was huge, bluff and tall, a massive two-decker 64. Where had she sprung from, he wondered?

“Sir!” Spendlove shouted from Radical ’s quarterdeck, aft at her taffrails. “Mister Lewrie, sir! What signal do I send her, sir?”

“Send her ‘Affirmative,’ Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie shouted back. “And I’m damned glad I am to see you alive, by the way, lad!”

“Makes two of us, sir!” the imp grinned, bloodied but whole. “I have her private number, sir. She’s Agamemnon, Capt. Horatio Nelson! Beyond, there’s Mermaid, 5th Rate 32, Capt. John Trigge,” Spendlove prated on, even as he bent on the “Affirmative” to a signal halliard. “And Cockerel, sir. She really did go for help, like you said, sir!”

“Sir!” Bittfield, the senior gunner, was yelling, too, trying to draw his attention. “Takin’ on water bad, she is, sir. Hadda get all the dependents up t’ th’ weather deck, sir. Best we get our people back aboard soon, we don’t wish t’ lose ’er, sir.”

“Cony, fetch Mister Porter and all the men he can gather up,” Lewrie ordered. “Patch what you can, until Agamemnon sends her hands to aid us. And get everyone, no matter who, working on the chain pumps.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Lewrie crossed over to Radical, working his way out the jib boom sideways on the foot ropes, to the bulwarks in which the corvette’s bow was deep-sunk. Looking down, he could see crushed planking between two rows of vertical hull timbers. Perhaps that was the worst damage, none of it too far below the waterline, he hoped.

He gained the larboard gangway and looked down into the waist. Women and children milled about down there, weeping and wailing, crying to heaven. Surgeons moved among them, loblolly boys were fetching up more from below, on the orlop. Wounded women! Dead, lolling children!

Dear God, that last broadside she got off, just before we went up in-irons, he quailed. The collision, everything come adrift below . . . ! I killed ’em, winnin’ my damned . . . victory!

He was at the head of the larboard quarterdeck ladder, about to descend, when Phoebe came rushing from the press to its foot, came up to throw herself upon him, laughing and weeping at the same time.

Thankee, Jesus, she’s alive! Thankee! he thought, hugging her no matter who saw them. Stroking her hair as she babbled, one minute trembling and bubbling over with joy, the next instant bawling fit to bust—all punctuated by hiccoughy French tripped off so fast he couldn’t catch a word in twenty.

“Calm, Phoebe, calm . . . I’m alright now. Calm,” he shusshed.

“Oh, Alain, merde alors, ze canon . . . ! Beaucoup femmes et enfants, zey tuer. Keel! Si très beaucoup. . . hurt!”

“Charles!” came a scream from below them. Sophie de Maubeuge scrambled up the quarterdeck ladder, blood on her gown. “M’sieur Lieutenant Luray, Charles . . . ?”

He let go of Phoebe, extended his arms to her. But she did not accept his embrace, but stopped short, paling, as she realised what he was about to say, by the expression of grief and sympathy on his face.

“Non, non, mon Dieu, non! ”

“Mademoiselle vicomtesse, je regrette . . .” he said gently, taking her hands instead. “Charles Auguste, Baron de Crillart . . . il nous à quittes.” Before she had time to take a breath for another hysterical scream, he told her the rest. “Aussi, Chevalier Louis de Crillart, il nous à quittes.”

God, how I hate that bloody phrase, he thought; nous à quittes. . . left us, gone away from us. Like it was their bloody idea!

Sophie let go of his hands, put them to either side of her head as if to tear her hair out by the roots, and screamed and screamed, as she sank to her knees. Had not Phoebe gone down to her, she would have tumbled to the base of the ladder, broken her neck. Phoebe cradled her head upon her breast, crooning to her, gentling her, while Alan stood, embarrassed by his role and his slowness . . . his uselessness.

“Charles . . . Louis . . . !” Sophie wailed, gone white, with her eyes ready to roll back into her head in a faint. “Madame!”

“What?” Lewrie started, finally noticing the blood on her gown.

“Oui, Alain,” Phoebe whispered as he went down to them, looking up with tears running free on her face, as bleak as if she’d lost someone, too. “Madame de Crillart. Ze murs, uhm . . . walls? . . . zey break open. Boulets de canon? Ze grande dame, elle est mort. Pauvre petite mademoiselle. . . she ’as lose ’er famille entier. . . ’ave no one, now.”

“I . . .” he whimpered, turning away, overcome. And sure that it was all his own bloody fault! “Oh, bloody . . .”

“Go, I see to ’er,” Phoebe urged. “You’ ship, she . . .”

Lewrie staggered away across the littered quarterdeck, and his borrowed cutlass clattered to the deck as it slipped from his nerveless fingers. He fetched up at the battered taffrails by one of the stern-chasers which still radiated spent heat. Scrubbing his face with both hands, trying to deny what he’d done, wondering if he could have done something different, taken another course of action that wouldn’t have gotten so many innocent and helpless slaughtered.

Off on the nor’east horizon a frigate was flying, pursued by a British ship. Near the transports, both fetched-to and looking as if they’d been knocked about, Cockerel cruised slowly. And the corvette he’d crippled had struck her colours, a Royal Navy ensign flying at her taffrail. How had the civilians fared aboard those transports, he wondered; had they suffered this much, after putting up token opposition, then striking? He feared they hadn’t.

Damme, he thought; I could have stood on, just a few minutes longer, endured her fire, and help would have arrived, these French would have had to sheer off, soon as they saw our warships closing . . . !

He turned to the sound of tumult, saw wounded men being brought aboard, the healthy slowly crawling across the bulwarks as empty-eyed as the defeated, saw his mates and petty officers putting them to work on the chain pumps after they’d embraced their families, and gotten a sip of something to relieve their dry mouths. Agamemnon fetching-to and lowering her boats—boats crammed with strong, helpful sailors to salve his ship and his prize. And saw men who’d faced battle and suffered come back aboard to find a loved one departed.

Shouldn’t be like this, he groused. Hard as the aftermath of a battle is . . . shouldn’t be like this.

Men could fall, be cruelly wounded and linger in their agonies among shipmates, in a tough masculine world where men could josh the dying, buck them up to go game or offer awkward comfort. And grieve for good friends departed, of a certainty, as their canvas-shrouded corpses were put over the side with round-shot at their feet. But to hear the lamentations of the orphaned, the widowed . . . ’stead of imaging some far-off bereavement, notified half a year later that the son, the father, the brother, the husband or lover was Discharged, Dead . . . !

“Shouldn’t ought to be like this,” he muttered, leaning on the taffrails for a few, last private moments, letting his own tears flow, choking on his own bereaved sobs before stern duty recalled him.

Phoebe had quieted Sophie de Maubeuge, last vicomtesse of her lineage, turned her over to the care of another aristocratic family’s women, and made her way back up the quarterdeck ladder to find him. She saw him far aft, leaning forward, head down, squeezing the rails, and her heart went out to him. She hitched up her skirts, ready to run to him, but Spendlove intervened.

“Ma’am?” he called, stepping in front of her, snuffling himself as the list of familiar hands who’d fallen accumulated in his ledger, as he recognised the bodies of friends and mentors and troublemakers from a full year’s association. “Don’t. Not now.”

“M’sieur Spen’loove,’e need . . .” Phoebe pled weakly.

“Ma’am,” Spendlove objected gently, taking her nearest hand, “I know you an’ Mister Lewrie . . . well, t’ain’t my place to say, what’s . . . but, ma’am? Do you care for him? Do you love him?”

“Vis all ma ’eart!” she declared, weeping anew at the force of her affection.

“Then, ma’am . . . give him a minute or two more, if you do,” Mister Midshipman Spendlove dared to suggest. “He’ll be back with us. For now, though, ma’am . . . let Mister Lewrie . . . let our captain have a cry.”