Dewey Lambdin - The King`s Commission

• Название: The King`s Commission
• Автор: Dewey Lambdin
• Жанр: Морские приключения

1782 First officer on brig o'war . . . Fresh from duty on the frigate Desperate in her fight with the French Capricieuse off St. Kitts, Midshipman Alan Lewrie passes his examination board for Lieutenancy and finds himself commissioned first officer of the brig o'war Shrike. There's time for some dalliance with the fair sex, and then Lieutenant Lewrie must be off to patrol the North American coast and attempt to bring the Muskogees and Seminoles onto the British side against the American rebels (dalliance with an Indian maiden is just part of the mission). Then it's back to the Caribbean, to sail beside Captain Horatio Nelson in the Battle for Turks Island. . . .Naval officer and rogue, Alan Lewrie is a man of his times and a hero for all times. His equals are Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin--sailors beloved by readers all over the world.

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"Springs is rigged, sir," Fukes reported.

"Very well. Mister Cox, stand by to open fire!"

Drake, as the flagship of their extemporized little subdivision, hoisted a signal, and all ships began a cannonade against the town.

"Seems a shame, sir," Caldwell said, after measuring any change from shore marks that would indicate Shrike was dragging her anchors or being blown out of position.

"What is, sir?" Alan asked off-handedly.

"Well, sir, looks as if the Frogs has already torn the town up for building material, and here we go, shooting the rest of it apart. It may not look like much to our lights, but it's their homes, sir."

"Umm, not for much longer, at this rate," Alan commented as the round-shot from the light guns tore holes in walls and roofs.

"Who was it, sir, one of those pagan Roman poets, said 'they make a desert and call it peace'?" Caldwell mused.

"Tacitus, perhaps," Alan answered. "Couldn't have been Virgil or Caesar. They were too proud of making deserts."

"Batt'ry, sir!" Cox shouted as a wall of gunpowder erupted from shore above the town. A round-shot, almost big enough to see in mid-flight, came howling over the bulwarks, and passed close enough to create a little back-eddy of wind.

"Damme, sir, that was a twenty-four-pounder, or I'm an Arabee!" Caldwell groused with un-wonted vehemence, shaken from his Puritan demeanor for once enough to curse.

"Mark that, Mister Cox?" Alan asked, scanning through the smoke of the broadside for sign of the guns.

"I think so, sir. There, or close enough as makes no diff'rence."

The newly discovered French battery began to put shot around all the brigs. As Cox re-laid his guns to respond, Alan counted the shots, and tried to gauge what caliber they were.

"Mister Cox, let's concentrate our fire on one embrasure, if you will!" Alan shouted down to the waist. "That one, there!"

"Aye, sir!"

"Six-pounders, there," Alan said. "About four or five of them."

"Seems about right, sir," Caldwell replied, his voice still a little shaky.

"And at least four twenty-four-pounders," Alan added, feeling a little grim himself. "This is going to be warm work for three little thin-sided brigs. And works with field-pieces up towards Britain Bay to counter Captain Dixon's shore party. More Frogs on this island than a dog's got fleas, more than reported, at any rate."

They had to duck as one of those twenty-four-pounders placed a round-shot close aboard, close enough to raise a great waterspout that fell over the quarterdeck and wetted them down in a twinkling as it skipped overhead to fall into the sea on the disengaged side. Shrike was, at least, out of the main line of fire, a little more sheltered than the Drake or Admiral Barrington. As the day wore on towards noon, Drake took a ball aloft which brought down the gaff of her spanker, and the Admiral Barrington was hulled with solid thonks of iron smashing wood.

The artillery killed the wind; that was something Alan had heard mentioned before but had never witnessed for himself. Where before there had been fresh winds offshore that stirred up the waters of the deep passages and set the brigs to rocking like cradles, now the sea was flat as a mill-pond, and the wind had died to almost nothing. The ships were wreathed in their own palls of smoke, and the fort ashore could only be espied by looking for the base of the towering pillar of spent powder. It didn't do much for their aim, but at least it made the job of the French troops serving their larger pieces just as hard.

"Signal from Drake, sir," Edgar said at his side, coughing on the sour smell of burned niters. "Cease fire."

"Very well, Mister Edgar. Mister Cox, cease fire!" Alan said. "Mister Edgar, my compliments to the purser, and tell him it's past time for dinner. Have him issue some cold rations and small-beer for the hands."

"Aye aye, sir."

A rowing boat sped down from the frigates anchored in Britain Bay, and went aboard Drake while the men were eating and curing their battle-induced thirsts. After half an hour, the boat came back along the anchored brigs.

"Sir, Captain Nelson directs me bid you to weigh," the midshipman in the stern yelled, his voice cracking a little; he was awfully young. "You are to return to Britain Bay and re-embark your party."

"Very well," Alan replied. "Well, that's another fine mess we've made," he added, turning to his quarterdeck people. "It'll take the frigates down here tomorrow to shoot that battery silent."

"And make another landing, maybe on the other side of the island, now we know where the Frogs is concentrated, sir," Cox said, free of his gun deck. He and his gunners looked black as Moors from all the grime of powder smoke on their skins. Alan could see the closest gun being sponged out with a water-soaked wool rammer, and other hands hoisting up buckets of seawater to sluice off the muzzles and touch-holes. The guns were hissing as the water cooled them like sated dragons.

"Bowse 'em down to the port-sills and secure, Mister Cox," he said. "Mister Fukes, get your people ready to veer out on the bower and take up the kedge soon as the gun crews are available. Wind's coming about a little more westerly. Quick as you can, both of you, or we'll end up rowing her out with the sweeps if the wind goes foul and leaves us on a lee shore."

The wind had swung, not so noticeable during the cannonading that had deadened it; now more southerly, with a touch of westing. Sure sign of a change in the weather, and that was usually a sign of worsening weather, especially in the Caribbean.

They got the kedge up, heaved into short stays on the bower, but could not get it to release from the bottom. Damme, and this was going so well! Alan thought sadly.

"Flukes hung up on a coral head, feels like, sir," Fukes told him. "I can almos' see 'er down there."

"Belay what you have, Mister Fukes. Hands aloft! Let go the driver and jibs! With a little forward way, we might sail her off."

"Aye, sir." Fukes sounded dubious. And with good cause. The anchor obstinately refused to let go her grip on the coral bottom, and no amount of straining at the capstans was going to shift her. The ship sailed up until she was almost standing directly over the anchor, with the cable bar-taut, and if anything, inclined slightly from the vertical, bent back under Shrike's forefoot and cutwater.

"Least this'un ain't the best bower, sir," Fukes offered after coming aft from the beakhead. "An' them other brigs ain't havin' much more luck'un us'un. Drake's arready cut, sir."

"The captain will have my hide if I lose an anchor, even the small bower, Mister Fukes," Alan groaned, thinking what a tongue-lashing he would receive when Lilycrop came back aboard.

With nowhere else to go forward, Shrike was now beginning to circle about her anchor, and the timbers around the hawse-holes were groaning alarmingly. The bow was slightly down and thumping.

"Well, shit," Alan sighed, giving in to the inevitable. "Cut the cable, Mister Fukes. Aloft there, loose tops'Is! Helm hard alee and hold her wind abeam if you can. Braces, shift the braces to the larboard tack!"

It was a sad trek back to Britain Bay, making slow progress until they could come to anchor again and clew up the sails to allow the boats to come alongside. Doctor Dorne and his loblolly boys from the surgery appeared, ready to receive any wounded men from the shore party, and Alan thought to have a bosun's sling rigged from aloft to help hoist injured men aboard.

Then their first boat was coming up to the starboard entry port, and Alan could look down into her. Rossyngton had the tiller, and Alan was ready to rate him for preceding the captain's boat to the chains, but a quick look at the second boat showed no sign of their captain, either. Yet Lilycrop's old cox'n was in the first boat. Was he dead?

"Sir!" Rossyngton shouted up as the boat thumped into Shrike's chainwales. He was filthy and sweaty, his hat gone somewhere. "It's the captain, sir!"

And there was Lieutenant Lilycrop, splayed out amidships between the oarsmen where he could not have been seen, his cox'n supporting his head and shoulders, and another man helping hold his legs up out of the bilges. He was gritting his teeth in agony and rolling his head back and forth to keep silent before his men.

The bosun's chair was lowered immediately, and Lilycrop helped into it and secured with a line about his waist. Gentle hands were there to ease his passage up the side, to keep him from bumping against the timbers. The stay-tackle hauled him up and over the gangway bulwarks and swung him over the waist. Lieutenant Lilycrop's right foot had been wrapped up in someone's shirt for a bandage, tied with small-stuff to keep it from falling off, with another length of twine about his leg above the knee to control the bleeding. Even so, his sodden wrap left a trail of blood droplets as he was lowered to the deck.

"Make haste here, damn your eyes, Mister Lewyss!" Alan called as he gained the waist and knelt over his stricken commander.

"Calm as does it, Mister Lewrie," Dr. Lewyss urged in a soft voice, patting Alan on the shoulder with a blood-grimed hand. "The captain already knows he's hurt, and we don't want him to take fright from all this yelling. Got to gentle the wounded, so ye do, like one would with a colt. Make 'em feel they have a chance, else they take fright and go all cold and grey. Seen it happen, and then you lose them, sure as Fate."

Lewyss shouldered on past him and knelt by the injured leg. As the loblolly boys were readying a carrying board, and Lilycrop was being freed of the bosun's sling, Lewyss unwrapped the bandage. Once he saw the wound, he could not help wincing and sucking air in through his clenched teeth at the sight.

The captain's right ankle was shattered. The shoe and stocking had been removed, though pieces of silk stocking still clung to the wound. The foot was a wine-dark horror, swollen beyond recognition, and hanging from the ankle by only a few remaining tendons at an obscene angle. Lewyss spanned his hand above the ankle, as though deciding just where he would start sawing to take it off, and found another wound, this one a bruise with a small blue-black hole in the center that oozed blood.

"Captain, sir," Lewyss said with as much false good cheer as he could summon. "We'll get you below to the surgery and fix you right up. Nothing for a man to worry about. 'Tis going to be a handsome thing as the ladies'll gush over in future. Take a few sips on this while my lads get you below, and there's more where that came from."

"Oh, shut up, you bloody Welsh fraud." Lilycrop grimaced. "I know you're to take my foot off. Gimme that bottle and get on with it, damn your eyes."

Lewyss offered him a small pocket flask of rum, which the captain bit the stopper from and spat out. He drained it at one go.

"Hurry. Mister Lewyss. I beg you," Alan urged in a harsh whisper.

"Lewrie, that you?"

"Aye, Captain."

"Don't stand there lookin' like a specter, sir. Ship alright? No wounded aboard?" Lilycrop asked between waves of pain.

"All well, sir," Alan said, close to tears. "We lost the small bower, sir."

"Small enough price." Lilycrop groaned as he was rolled over onto the carrying board and lashed down. "Doctor, have you no more rum fer me, damn you? Let's get goin'! Get it over with, for the love of God!"

Lewyss nodded to his hands, and they lifted the captain up to carry him away, gripping onto the loops of rope in the carrying board to maneuver his form down the steep ladders of the main hatch to the surgery aft in the cockpit.

"It'll have to come off, of course, sir," Lewyss whispered sadly. "I could leave him most of the calf, but for that second wound. There's a musket ball about a hand-span above the ankle, and bones sure to be broken there. At least he'll have half his calf, and the knee, of course. Make things much better for him when it comes time to fit him for an appliance. He may walk almost naturally."

"Then you'd best be about it, Mister Lewyss," Alan snapped.

"Time enough, sir," Lewyss said, not to be hurried. "Let him have some more rum first, and let the numbness set in. If you will excuse me, sir."

"No one else wounded, Mister Rossyngton?" Alan asked, once the doctor had taken himself below to his sad duty.

"No, sir. Just the captain," the midshipman reported, shaken into somberness. "The landing was pretty much unopposed, sir, just some pickets to slow us down in the woods. But we came up against some heavy volleys once we were over the first hill. And we went to ground there, sir. We sent for a diversion against the town, as I expect you know, sir."

"Aye."

"The French fell back to a work above the town," Rossyngton went on, between sips of small-beer from a large wooden piggin. "And they had field guns there, maybe four of 'em, six-pounders. We could see seamen as well as soldiers, sir. Hundreds of 'em. Captain Dixon had just ordered us to retire-not much we could have done in the face of that work-and the captain gave a little grunt, sort of, sir. This cannon ball came rolling out of the bushes, spent almost, but it hit his foot and just flipped him arse over tit, sir, like an acrobat. How he got the second wound, I don't know, sir."

"Signal from flag, sir!" Edgar called. "It's… 'Captains Repair On Board,' sir."

"Damn that fool yonder!" Alan spat. "And just how does he think our captain can manage that, I wonder?" He was feeling a heavy wave of guilt. If he had not been malingering, acting as if he was incapable of fulfilling his duties as a whole man, Lieutenant Lilycrop would still have a foot. It was his fault that that good man, a man who had treated him more than fairly, was now undergoing the horror of Lewyss' knives, saws and probes. Then again, he rationalized, it could be him on the table, turning into a maimed figure of fun for the street urchins back home, who would taunt "Mr. Hopkins" at any person with any sort of deformity.

"Um, think you'd better go in the captain's place, sir," Caldwell suggested, interrupting his furious musings. "To the flag, that is."

"Hmm. Me?"

"Yessir, with the captain down wounded, you're in charge for now, sir," Caldwell repeated.

"Damme, I suppose I am, ain't I?" Alan nodded, slowly comprehending it all.

Alan's boat ground against Albemarle's side by the main-chains, with Cony holding fast with a painter and Andrews at the tiller as a temporary cox'un. It was with difficulty that he got up the man-ropes and battens to the deck. He was greeted with the shrill of bosun's pipes and the side-party due a captain, which made him shrivel up with guilt once more. He had not known where the other officers stood in seniority to him, so he was the last aboard, and once he had doffed his hat in return salute he limped over to join the others.

"I am Lieutenant Osborne, first into Albemarle, sir. And you are?"

"Alan Lewrie, first officer of Shrike, brig o' war," Alan replied.

"Sir, allow me to name you to the others. Lieutenant Lewrie of Shrike; Captain James King of Resistance, Lieutenant Charles Cunningham of Admiral Barrington, Captain Charles Dixon of Drake. Our second, Lieutenant Martin Hinton, and our Lieutenant Joseph Bromwich. I believe you have already met earlier, have you not? Captain Nelson shall receive you in a few moments."