The Invasion Year (42 page)

“
Reliant
Number One!” Desmond called back.

“Aye, come alongside to larboard!” the voice yelled back.

Desmond put the tiller over to swing the cutter round
Fusee
’s stern. “Easy all,” he ordered, to ghost near her sides.

“That you, Captain Lewrie?” Mr. MacTavish asked in an exaggerated whisper from one of the barges that sat rocking and wallowing by the converted bomb’s bows.

“Here, sir!” Lewrie called back, forcing himself to sound eager.

“We’ve four torpedoes ready in the water, ready for towing as soon as you’re ready to receive them, sir,” MacTavish said, sounding gleeful.

“Christ!” Lewrie muttered, imagining four of the beasts primed and ready, their spikes and grapnels, affixed, bobbing close together!

“Hoy, the boat!” again from the quarterdeck.

“
Reliant
Number Two!” Lt. Merriman announced as his cutter came in sight, ghosting up behind Lewrie’s.

“I will see to one of them, Midshipman Frederick the second,” MacTavish continued as loud as he dared, as if a French guard boat was within hearing distance. “McCloud’s instructed him thoroughly in its operation, and it’s simple enough, after all.”

Says you!
Lewrie sourly thought;
Is that the lad’s name?

“Our two are ready for towing,” MacTavish went on. “Lieutenant Johns will pass you your tow-lines. Sure you have everything in hand, sir? Row in abreast, about one hundred yards apart, and release them as one?”

“If we can
see
to do that, aye,” Lewrie told him.

“Well, er…,” MacTavish flummoxed.

Didn’t think that quite through, did ye?
Lewrie scoffed to himself.

“I’ve a small hooded lanthorn, and if I spark my flint tinder that may create a signal,” MacTavish extemporised quickly. “I will be the one to judge the heights of the masts, and the proper time to set them free. When I signal, set your timers for fourty-five minutes.”

“Bow man, hook on,” Desmond ordered, steering the cutter under
Fusee
’s larboard side just long enough for a towing line to be thrown down to them and secured to a stern cleat. “Ready, sor.”

“Make way, Desmond, and get us clear of the others. To starboard of
Fusee
’s barges.”

“Aye, sor.”

“Jaysus, Joseph, an’ Mary,” stroke-oar, Patrick Furfy, muttered as the tow-line paid out to the point that the massive torpedo put a strain on it, slowing the cutter to a crawl. He freed one hand long enough to make a sketchy cross over his chest.

As delightful as
Reliant
’s sailors had thought the idea of blowing Frenchmen to Kingdom Come, the explanation of how they would have to deal with the torpedoes’ inner workings had made many of them look queasy and “cutty-eyed.” Primed pistols to be cocked? Clocks set at the last moment, too, right alongside 120 pounds of gunpowder?
Brr!
If their officers or their senior Midshipmen did it, that was one thing, but if the time came for a massive attack with dozens of them, and it would possibly be
their
duty to set the clocks and prime the pistols and get away, that was quite another! Which was why Lewrie was here in
Reliant
’s lead cutter. Whether
he
cared to be, or not!

Lewrie could see two faint grey smears off to his left as the two barges slowly stroked away to form half of the line-abreast, white-painted hulls sooted to blend in with the sea and the night. He turned to look aft again, and made out Lt. Merriman’s cutter just beginning to stroke free of
Fusee
’s sides.

“Let’s be about it, then, Desmond,” Lewrie told his Cox’n. “We will form line-abreast with those two boats to larboard.”

“Aye, sor,” his usually cocky Irish Cox’n grimly replied.

The oars creaked in their canvas-wrapped tholes in unison, and the cutter surged to each long stroke, rocking and wallowing between to the chops and rolls of the sea, rising and dipping to the scend with a faint sound of surging water down its flanks. The hands dug in and uttered faint grunts to drive forward, the cask torpedo’s towing line raising a groan of its own, dragging against the rowers’ efforts as if the cutter was tethered to a stone landing stage. So slowly it seemed that the time went by, with the lights of Le Crotoy and St. Valery drawing no closer, the anchored trots of invasion boats remaining tiny and distant, with the threat of a cruising gunboat lying just beyond their sight ’til one might suddenly loom up, demanding identification, with its guns run out and ready for firing!

Then, in a twinkling, Lewrie thought them
too
close to the enemy boats, as if he’d managed to nod off for long minutes and was presented with being at close quarters, awakened by some Frenchman crying,
“Qui va là?”
or the bark of a gun! He could make out individual shops and houses ashore, spot waggons in the streets, espy people strolling about, and the
péniches
and
caïques
anchored in their dozens were so close that he could almost make out details in their rigging!

Close enough, dammit?
he asked the aether, turning to peer out to larboard for MacTavish’s signal, for a spark from his flintlock and tinder lighter, or the covert flash from his hooded lanthorn, but there was nothing to pierce the darkness. He couldn’t even see either of
Fusee
’s barges. If it had been up to him, he’d have signalled for the torpedoes’ release five minutes before! Off to starboard, there was no sign of Lt. Merriman’s cutter any longer. So when…?

“Izzat a spark, sir?” an oarsman whispered.

Yes, and just thankee, Jesus!
Lewrie crowed to himself, for he could see it, too, as MacTavish cocked and fired his igniter over and over.

“Easy all, Desmond,” Lewrie whispered to his Cox’n. “Furfy and Hartnett … haul on the tow-line and bring the thing alongside.”

“Aye, sor!” Furfy softly replied, crossing himself once more.

Without forward motion, the cutter wallowed and rolled fitfully as the great cask was pulled up astern, right to the cutter’s transom. Lewrie laid his hat aside and leaned out as far as he could reach to take hold of it, but those spike bayonets and the grapnels fended the torpedo off like an aroused porcupine. It butted against the cutter’s rudder with loud thuds, keeping it even further away!

Well,
this
is hellish-awkward,
Lewrie silently fumed.

“Let’s haul it round alongside the larboard quarter,” Lewrie ordered. That spared the rudder, but the bayonets still kept it too far away; the only way that he could see to remove the large bung-like tompion from the torpedo’s hemispherical top and reach down
inside
to set and activate its mechanism would be to leave the boat altogether and clamber
on top
of it … and if he fell off, he would surely drown, for Lewrie could not swim a single stroke! The last time he had been forced into the sea was at Toulon in 1794 when his mortar ship exploded, flinging him sky-high, and his cabin steward, Will Cony, had buoyed him up and towed him to the nearby beach!

“See if you can turn it halfway round, Furfy,” Lewrie snapped in frustration. “Spin it so the grapnels lay fore-and-aft, and take off two or three of the bayonets.”

“
Touch
it, sor?” Furfy yelped, wiping his big hands down both thighs of his slop-trousers. “
Me,
sor?”

“Aye,
you,
sir!” Lewrie insisted. “The bayonets fit over the barrel stubs like they do on yer own muskets. Furfy … the bloody thing can’t go off ’til I’ve
set
it!”

“Bear a hand, Pat,” Liam Desmond snapped, leaning over the side. “You too, Hartnett. Pass the gaff back here. Thomas, hook onto one o’ the liftin’ ring-bolts t’steady th’ bastard.”

They got the torpedo turned and removed three of the bayonets, which allowed the massive bulk to thud right against the cutter’s hull, sounding like a large wooden bell despite the need for silence. Lewrie turned his head to see that the larboard-side oarsmen not involved with the torpedo’s turning and steadying shrank back to starboard.

“Let’s see, now,” he muttered, leaning far out despite how close they had hauled it, grasping one of the ring-bolts with his left hand, and groping at the tompion with his right. “Damme, that’s snug!”

The tompion which kept the inner works dry was a flush fit into the low-domed wooden top, with only a small brass ring-bolt in the centre, only large enough to pass a thin rope through it, or one finger! Lewrie clawed the tompion’s edges with his fingernails, but that was of no avail. There was nothing for it but to lean out even further from the dubious safety of the cutter, chest pressed against the torpedo’s top and his legs from the knees down
inside
the boat so he could take hold of the ring-bolt and try to pull upwards. “Well, shit, finally! Here, Furfy.”

He handed the tompion back to Furfy, the nearest seaman, who acted as if Lewrie had just offered him a lit
grenado
bomb!

He still couldn’t reach inside, though.

“Hold it close alongside, lads, and
very
bloody steady, hey?” Lewrie whispered harshly to his sailors as he groped for the far edge of the torpedo to haul himself out half on top of the bobbing, rolling beast. “Hold my legs, Desmond.”

Even though he had managed to reach inside, the night was nigh as black as a boot, and even a tiny glim candle was right out of the question; too much gunpowder, and too many damned French patrols! He stuck one arm down inside, fumbled about, and found the clockwork mechanism. The only hand, the minute hand, was straight up at “midnight.” Lewrie gently pushed it down to what felt like a quarter past. Oops! As the cutter and torpedo bobbed opposed to each other, he had to fiddle some more to make sure that he hadn’t pushed the hand down too far! Now, where were the two trigger lines? He found them, drew them to their full lengths, and pulled his arm clear.

God, forgive a sinner!
he prayed, then jerked them both, hard.

Both mechanisms sounded off together, making him gasp in fright; there was a hellish
clank!
as the fire-lock on the pistol drew back to full cock, and a bladder-emptying
whirr-tick!
as the snugly wound clock began to function. After a few panting breaths to calm himself—and realise that he
hadn’t
been blown to atoms!—Lewrie coiled up those lines and dropped them to a far corner of the torpedo’s interior.

“Right, Furfy. Hand me the bung, again,” he bade. Sliding just a bit more into the cutter, he carefully placed it atop the torpedo’s top, rattled it round into the hole, and tried to push it back down.

“Christ on a crutch! Mine arse on a bloody
band-box,
it won’t seat!” Lewrie spat. Had it swelled in the few minutes it had been out? The tompion was only halfway home, and the priming and the powder in the pistol barrel which fired the larger charge would be soaked as the torpedo bobbed its way inshore, with the chop sloshing over it!

“Hand me an oar, somebody. I’ll have t’hammer it home!”

Every sailor in the boat croaked, taking in great gasps of air! Someone—it might have been the bow man—let out a wee whimper!

But they passed him an oar, which he shortened up on as he slid back into the cutter, feeling an immense sense of relief, it must here be noted! He turned the loom of the oar flat to the tompion, lifted it, then gave it a couple of hard whacks.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be…!”

“Does it look flush yet, Desmond?” Lewrie asked.

“Oh, flush’z yer dinin’ table, sor,
aye
!” Desmond whinnied, seconded by a chorus of hearty agreement from the rest.

“I don’t know…,” Lewrie speculated, using the loom of the oar to prod the rim of the tompion; if it slid smooth, that was fine, but … he reckoned there might be an inch to go for sure water-tightness.

Well, it ain’t gone bang yet, so…,
he thought, rising to stand in the boat, with Furfy clinging to his legs to steady him; or cringe in terror. Lewrie slammed the oar down on the tompion one more time, much harder, causing a deep empty-barrel thud from the torpedo, a thud that sounded very much like
Doom!
Several sailors stuck fingers in their ears and squinted their eyes tight shut!

“Look flush now, Desmond?” he asked again.

“I, ah … wouldn’t know, sor,” Desmond croaked.