Reefs and Shoals (21 page)

“We’ll fall in trail position aft of
Firefly,
Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped. “Mister Spendlove?” he called down to the waist.

“Aye, sir?”

“Open the starboard gun-ports and run out!” Lewrie gleefully told him. “And stand by to engage at close range!”

The gun crews gave out a loud, inarticulate growl of approval as the port lids were raised, and the gun-captains summoned the boy powder monkeys from amidships with the first charges of propellant.

A minute or two later, the sun burst above the Eastern horizon, and all that had been murky and ill-defined stood out starkly. Forests and beach-trimmed shores, the meagre clutch of shacks and large canvas tents ashore near the mouth of the river, and the anchored ships now could be seen in detail.

“No flags showing on the anchored ships, yet, sir,” Lt. Westcott noted.

Both of them were two-masted, either topsail schooners or Bermudan or Jamaican sloops, neither much longer than
Lizard
or
Firefly,
with their jib-booms and bow-sprits steeved closer to the horizontal than was the usual fashion in merchant ships or purpose-built warships. Their hulls were so dark that they were almost black, with narrow hull stripes; on the nearest was a dark blue stripe, and on the furthest an odd blue-grey. Their masts were raked aft a bit more than usual, as if they followed the American shipbuilding fashion.

“Aha! Wakey-wakey!” Lewrie snickered after he lifted his telescope, and spotted men popping up on their decks, dashing about in confusion, as if ordered to man their guns, make sail, and cut their anchor cables, all at the same time. But they had no time.

Just bloody beautiful!
Lewrie exulted;
Them, the bay, everything!
The bay was an artist’s palette of dark greens, aquas, and jade, sparkling in the dawn light like a field of gems. And the trap he’d sprung…!

“Note in the log, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie called over to the Sailing Master, “that
Lizard
and
Firefly
opened upon the near vessel at … a quarter ’til six
A.M.
,”

Damme,
that’s
well done,
Lewrie appreciatively thought as
Lizard,
the slightly stronger ship in weight of metal, stood up to the nearest sloop and wheeled to lay abeam of her at a range of a single cable before she opened fire off the sloop’s starboard bows, sails reduced and making a slow steerage way so Lt. Bury’s gunners might be able to get off a second or third broadside in passing.
Firefly
followed in her wake, wheeling abeam in succession to add her four starboard 6-pounders a bit later.

At such close range, it was almost impossible to miss. Shot-splashes rose close-aboard the sloop’s waterline, and roundshot punched holes below the sloop’s row of gun-ports, and smashed chunks from her bulwarks, staggering her masts.

A few of the first sloop’s gun-ports swung up, and stubby gun muzzles appeared as some were run out, but only two fired, aimlessly, before a scramble began to her un-engaged side as her crew abandoned the fight, leaping over the larboard rails for their boats, or a long swim to the beach.

“Carry on, Bury, carry on!” Lewrie yelled as if his voice would reach that far, hoping that the little two-ship column could engage the second sloop before she could prepare herself for battle.

“We’re almost at a cable’s range of the first, sir,” Westcott judged aloud.

“My compliments to Mister Spendlove, and he’s to open upon her the instant he deems it feasible, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered, quite looking forward to the thunder and clouds of powder smoke.

“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott replied. “Hoy, Mister Spendlove!”

The second sloop had managed to cut her single anchor cable and was paying off leeward as her crew got up a jib, and her main fore-and-aft gaff sail, very slowly sagging and swinging her bows towards the leading British ship,
Lizard.
Bad luck for her, for all that was doing was presenting her weak bow scantlings to a rake, and closing the range to her own mauling.

“
As
you
bear
 … by
broadside
 …
fire
!” Lt. Spendlove shouted, waiting for the decks to pause on the faint scend and the up-roll, when it was level and still.

The range was about a quarter-mile to the first sloop when the first of
Reliant
’s broadsides lit off, 12-pounder bow chase gun, all the starboard 18-pounders, the quarterdeck 9-pounders, even the 32-pounder carronades with their elevating screws fully down and their muzzles lifted to the fullest safe elevation.

The 6-pounders of the smaller ships had nipped and bitten the anchored sloop, but
Reliant
’s broadside was an iron avalanche. Just before the thick bank of spent powder smoke blotted out their view, Lewrie got a quick glimpse of bulwarks and upper planking shattering in dusty clouds of splinters and chunks, of large, irregular holes blossoming in her sides, and of both masts and tops’l yards coming apart in darting zig-zags of jagged ruin.

As the guns were swabbed, and the recoil and run-out tackle overhauled, the light winds wafted the reeking powder smoke alee to larboard, giving Lewrie a clearer view with his day-glass.

“I don’t think she’ll be needin’ another broadside,” Lewrie said, chuckling. The target was dis-masted, almost level with where the tops of her bulwarks had been, if they hadn’t been blown to kindling. There were several holes in her upper and lower hull planking, and a large one just by her waterline. If anyone was still aboard her, they were out of sight.

Lizard
and
Firefly
were engaging the further sloop, which by then was helplessly bows-on to their fire. Bury and Lovett had closed the range to the point that even their swivel guns were yapping like terriers. That sloop was being
sieved
with shot!

What’s
Thorn
doing?
Lewrie wondered, stepping over to the lee rails to get a better look. The smoke from his ship’s guns, and the guns of the smaller ships, had mingled and accumulated rapidly, held together, perhaps, by the early-morning humidity, making a thick and drifting haze ahead and to larboard, but he could make out
Thorn
as she stood in close to the shore and the river mouth, and that encampment, beam onto
Reliant.
She was wreathed in smoke from her stubby but powerful carronades. Beyond her, trees and bushes writhed, the large tents and shelters were being whipped away, and
Thorn
must have hit something explosive, for there was a burst of flame and a thick cloud of dark smoke, and a shower of hot sparks that set even more of the camp afire.

“Ehm, captain, sir,” Mr. Caldwell cautioned. “It’s getting a tad shallow for us. Perhaps…”

“Aye, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie replied. “Mister Westcott, lay us two points alee, into the deeper water to loo’rd. Mister Spendlove? We’re falling off alee. Serve that second sloop as best you can!”

“Quoins out a bit,” Lt. Spendlove instructed his gun-captains. “And aim small, lads. Ready, the battery? On the up-roll by broadside … fire!”

The second sloop was almost bows-on to
Reliant,
with
Firefly
and
Lizard
standing well clear beyond her by then. The range would be closer to half a mile, and the target narrow, but the broadside roared out. Already damaged, that sloop shivered like a stand of saplings to the weight and fury of the frigate’s hail of roundshot. Her jib-boom, bow-sprit, and foremast were scythed away, and misses frothed the waters close aboard her.

“Drop it, Mister Spendlove! Dead’un!” Lewrie shouted down to the waist, jeering in the vernacular of the rat-pit to urge a terrier to go kill another. “Cease fire, and secure!”

Beyond the shattered sloops there were several rowing boats, all pulling madly for the far shore or the long strip of barrier islands, like a gaggle of panicked ducks.

“Ye might have to spell this out, Mister Eldridge, but make to
Lizard
and
Firefly,
their numbers, and ‘Take Prisoners’.”

Oh, eager lads!
he thought a moment later, even as the signal was being assembled, for Lt. Bury in
Lizard
was already leading her consort in pursuit, sailing much faster than the boats could be rowed, heading them off from escape.

“Belay, Mister Eldridge. It seems it’s bein’ done.” Lewrie said, turning to share a grin with Lt. Westcott, then crossing over to the other side of the deck to see what
Thorn
was up to.

Lt. Darling had taken his ship past the encampment, almost to the mouth of the river before coming about to fire with her larboard battery, near the eyes of the wind for a bit, sails shivering or laid aback, before paying off Sutherly. When she was done, there was little sign that the camp had been there, but for the burning, smouldering ruin of the shacks and tents, and a new clearing littered with felled trees and up-rooted bushes.

“Mister Westcott, I’d admire did ye bring our head round into the wind and fetch-to, and have all the boats manned. Marines, too, to take possession of the prizes, and scout the camp.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Then, we’ll find out just who, and what, we’ve captured,” Lewrie said with a broad grin.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The engagement had been great fun, but a short delight. After came a myriad of details and reports, questions, and tasks to be seen to, which took all the joy of it for Lewrie.

Lt. Simcock returned with half of his forty-man Marine complement from the encampment to report that he, his Marines, and sailors from
Thorn
had tallied up the dead, set fire to the last of the foodstuff and supplies ashore, then come away before suffering any casualties of their own. “It looked as if there might have been fifty or sixty or so ashore when we attacked, sir. We found about fifteen dead, but the rest ran off into the forests, and it appeared that they did so under arms … pistols and muskets and such. We scavenged what weapons left behind, but…” he ended with a shrug.

“There’s nothing left of any worth to the survivors, sir,” Lt. Darling proudly related. “I and my people saw to
that.
They’ll not have a single drop of rum, wine, or beer, either. We, ah … appropriated a few kegs, and scuttled the rest, sir.”

“You didn’t find any American corn whisky, did you?” Lewrie took time to ask. “No? Pity.”

Then it was Lt. Merriman, Midshipmen Entwhistle and Warburton, and the Bosun, Mr. Sprague, and his Mate, Mr. Wheeler, who came back aboard from the captured prizes with their reports.

“They are both Spanish, sir,” Lt. Merriman told the assembled officers. “That’un yonder, is the
Escorpion,
” he said, pointing to the first sloop, “and the second is named the
Santa Doratea.
Both are from Havana, each armed with ten guns. Most of the guns bear proof marks from Cuba, some from Cadiz, though there are some odds-and-sods … a few French, Dutch, or even one British.”

“Tell me they’re privateers,” Lewrie urged with the fingers of his right hand crossed behind his thigh.

“Oh, privateers right enough, sir!” Lt. Merriman said with a beamish grin. “We found their registries, and their Letters of Marque and Reprisal, signed by the Captain-General of Cuba, along with their muster books. All told, there were nigh an hundred and eighty men and officers, though not all were aboard when we engaged them.”

“I’ve their papers and muster books, sir,” Lewrie’s clerk, Mr. James Faulkes, interrupted. “Shall I stow them in your cabins, sir?”

“Aye, atop the desk, for now, thankee, Faulkes,” Lewrie said. “Are they worth salvaging, Mister Sprague?” he asked the Bosun.

“Pish, sir!” Sprague scoffed, begging pardon long enough to go to the nearest spit-kid and hock up his worn-out bite of chew-tobacco. “They’re both hulled clean through, aloft and alow, dis-masted, and what little spare spars and such the Dons had aboard are smashed, to boot. We got ’em re-anchored so they don’t drift ashore, but sure as Fate, they’ll both be on the bottom in a few hours, and fothering’d be a waste o’ time, sir, and that’d be a cryin’ pity, for one of ’em is made o’ Cuban mahogany, and do ye maintain her proper, she’d last for ages.”

“Kept nigh Bristol-fashion abovedecks, sir,” Wheeler added, “but all Donnish below, all trash and filth. Damned idle Spaniards.”

“Mister Mainwaring said to inform you, sir, that he counted four dead and two badly wounded aboard
Escorpion,
and six dead and five wounded aboard the
Santa Doratea.
He and the Surgeon’s Mates are tending to them, but he suspects that three of the wounded will pass before dusk. He asks whether you wished the wounded be brought aboard
Reliant,
sir.”

“Aye, before both ships sink out from under them,” Lewrie decided. “You lads, row over to the prizes and help the Surgeon and his Mates fetch the wounded Spaniards off,” he said to the Mids. “If they’re not worth tuppence as prizes, we might as well scuttle them. Mister Sprague, I’d admire did ye see to speeding their destruction along. Pile up flammables, lay trains to their powder magazines, all that. How many hands will you need for that?”

“No more than the boat’s crews t’take us over, sir,” the Bosun reckoned. “We can start right away.”

“Once their wounded are off the prizes, see to it,” Lewrie told him, “and I’ll let you know when to set them alight.”