Dewey Lambdin - H.M.S. COCKEREL

• Название: H.M.S. COCKEREL
• Автор: Dewey Lambdin
• Жанр: Морские приключения

Alan Lewrie works to get a leg over on Emma Hamilton, and comes face to face with the rising star in France, a guy called Napoleon, as well as the infamous Captain Bligh. Not a small feat!

---

"Morning, Mister Scott," Lewrie took time to smile.

"Argh," Scott muttered, wiggling his tongue and grimacing with the taste of cognac still in his mouth. "Morning, Mister Lewrie, sir," he managed, thick-headed. "What the Devil's goin' on?"

"Bonjour, m'sieur Luray," the girl called cheerfully.

"Bonjour, mademoiselle," Lewrie replied with an approximate bow.

"Phoebe," Scott supplied gruffly, dry-swabbing his face some more and knuckling his eyes, child-like. "I think she said. Scrawny little chit, but…" He shrugged and gave her a pinch, making her yelp.

But damned fetching, Lewrie took more time to note.

"Sounds like it's coming from beyond Fort Malbousquet," Alan said, returning to professional matters. "Maybe that General Carteau finally marched from Marseilles, got his guns up during the night. I…"

There was a slowly rising tumulus of powder beyond Mal-bousquet, and the hills to the sou'west, sour-looking, greyish tan. Fummjummjumm! this time in rapid succession, and another belch of smoke rose into the sky, a twining, twisting ball to join the rest. Umummum they echoed on the hills. Yet there were no strikes on Fort Malbousquet, the most important redoubt which guarded the western approaches. Lewrie swung his telescope right and left, to see what they were shooting for. There!

Crack-crack^crack!

Explosive shells burst when their fuses burned down. But burst in the Little Road, around the anchored prize-frigate Aurore and two floating batteries. Two went off very close to the water, roiling the road waters with spreading trout splashes of ripples; the third burst too high, due to a shorter fuse, scattering iron slivers that created a miniature hail storm across the waters beneath an unfolding rose of powder smoke.

Fwnm-fumm! came a double report, from a second set of guns this time, a little farther off to the south. These were improperly fused, too. They fell into the roadstead, erecting tall twin candlesticks of spray as they struck and sank. Followed a moment later, as the fuses reached their powder charges, by dirty humps of smoke grey foam, which hoisted aloft in gigantic feather-like plumes as tall as mast trucks.

"Masked batteries," Lewrie said to one and all. "Heavy guns, by God."

"Siege guns," Scott opined, awake now. "Twenty-four-pounders?"

"Firing masked, though…" Lewrie countered, shaking his head.

Fumm-fumm-fumm! He began counting the seconds to himself. Now that he was listening for it, Alan could hear the faint shrieking moan of shells lofted through the early morning air. Three new pillars rose in the Little Road, hopelessly wide of the ships. So far.

"Mile and a half, I think, Mister Scott," he called out. "Don't think they're siege guns. Firin' masked, they'd have to elevate high, and anything over what? eight degrees or so'd-burst the barrels."

"Howitzers," Scott guessed.

"What's an army lug about," Lewrie shouted back, getting excited there might be some action at last. "Six, eight, or twelve-pounder howitzers? Little too far, even for them. I think they must be mortars."

He'd experienced mortars; all those weeks under the drumfire of a French artillery train at Yorktown, aiding the Rebels. Twelve- or thirteen-inch they'd been, some as big as sixteen-inch. Massive shells they'd fired, solid shot, bursting shell, their fuses glowing in the night like fiery banshees-and carcases; flaming wads soaked in anything that'd burn… and keep on burning once they buried themselves in a house… or a ship.

"Les Republicains?" little Phoebe asked fearfully, pulling her sheet up higher about her. "Mon dieu!"

"Well, they ain't the Royal Horse Artillery," Scott sneered.

"Oui, mademoiselle, ils sont les Republicains," Lewrie told her. "Mister Scott, get the hands mustered. I'll dress and run up to headquarters to see what's what."

"Ve 'ave brea'fas', Barnaby?" Phoebe asked. "Le petit dejeuner?"

"Run along, squirrel, there's work to do," Scott said.

That shelling had started on 18 September. Next day, more batteries had opened fire upon the tightly packed ships in the Little Road-batteries masked by the sheltering heights of La Petite Garenne and another middling hill a little sou'west of the first. Twenty-four-pounder siege guns joined in, too, firing direct, though at maximum elevation on their trunnions, from high ground near La Seyne, the civilian harbour.

This forced some of the shipping to move, out through the Gullet to new anchorages in the Great Road to the east, or closer in towards the jetties of the basin. A brace of gunboats, floating batteries, were got out of the yards, manned and sent to the nor'west arm of the Little Road near Fort Millaud and the Poudriere, the powder-magazine. And they were reinforced by a full crew of gunners on the Aurore, and the presence of Rear-Admiral John Gell's flagship, the mighty ninety-eight-gunned, three-decker St. George.

The French had the advantage, though, of being masked, their exact position unknown, and were able to fire with more or less scientific accuracy from stable, fixed positions, with observers to correct the fall-of-shot. Sooner or later, trigonometry, ballistics, and the right guesstimate on powder measure to be ignited, and the right length of fuse to be fitted, would score a hit, and that a devastating one.

The British gunners could only roughly guess where behind the masking hills the batteries were, firing from ships which, even at anchor, shifted and recoiled with each massive discharge. They had to probe with their shells, much like a blind man must feel for the kerb with his cane, hoping for the best.

French fire was so gallingly accurate, towards the afternoon of the 19th, that the gunboats had to slip their cables and retire. They returned to the duel on the morning of 20 September. And by midday, one of the floating batteries was hit and damaged, and the second was sunk outright.

This they watched from a post on the basin's western jetty, engaged in trundling powder and shot out to the thirty-two-and forty-two-pounders, just in case… Between trips, during a dinner break, or a rest stop with mugs of appallingly piss-poor French beer, Lewrie and his men had ringside seats, right up to the ropes, as it were, where they could best see the opponents toe up and square off.

"Hmm, I wonder…" Lieutenant Scott grimaced, turning to peer towards the west beyond Fort Malbousquet, then to the heights to the north.

"Wonder what, Mister Scott?"

"Your pet… did that Crillart fellow say how many men they have yonder, in Carteau's army?" Scott inquired.

'Two divisions… maybe six thousand or so, if they're up to the old establishments yet, I think I heard."

"And we've barely five thousand so far, guarding…"

"Guarding bloody everything," Lewrie snorted. "Lapoype from the east might be about the same size." He sat uneasily, trying to at least appear calm for his men, on a massive granite block of the jetty's breastworks, swinging his heels over the waterside. "Least this bugger's not done much else but shell, so far. No infantry probes to speak of."

"Maybe Carteau's leadin' us by the nose, waiting for all the men coining down from Lyons. Keep our attention fixed here, whilst…"

"Oh, there you are, Mister Lewrie, sir!" the teenaged mid-

H.M.S. COCKEREL 233

shipman cried, the same little pest they'd met their first day ashore. "Been searching all over Creation for you," he panted. "Rear-Admiral Goodall's finest compliments to you, Lieutenant Lewrie, and he begs me to direct you to his presence, as soon as is practicable, sir."

"Something useful for us to do, at last?" Lewrie wondered aloud.

"One may not presume to, uhm… presume, sir, but…" the midshipman shrugged.

"Mister Scott, take charge of the hands. Keep 'em busy, whilst I toddle off," Lewrie said, swinging his legs back over the bulwark.

"Aye, sir," Scott replied. "And whatever business they wish of us, sir…?"

"Aye, Mister Scott?"

"Well, damme, we're sailors… keep us out of those hills, could you, at least?" Scott implored.

"I'll do my best, sir," Lewrie smiled.

Chapter 6

Lewrie had kept them out of those forbidding hills, though he wasn't exactly sure he'd done them any favours. Rear-Admiral Goodall had only the briefest sketch of Lewrie's career, and had been intent upon a large map of the area, in the middle of a conference with his opposite number, Rear-Admiral Gravina of the Spanish Navy, and a host of subordinates, all of whom had a loud opinion of what should be done, and at that very instant before…

"Commanded two bomb ketches, I see, sir," Goodall had commented.

"Yes, sir, but-"

"Batt'ry at Yorktown, by God. Land service."

"Yes, sir, although-"

"That folderol in the Far East, shellin' pirates an' such?"

"Well, in fact…"

They'd been converted bombs, reduced to tiny but stoutly built ketch-rigged gunships; his two-gun batteries at Yorktown hadn't fired a single shot, much less had a target; the folderol in the Far East was not exactly mortar work now, was it, but…

"Cheesy-lookin' raft," Lewrie muttered. "Ain't it."

They'd given him a floating battery. They'd also given him an "all-nations" to sort out. Lieutenant de Crillart showed up, full of ginger and good cheer, eager to be doing something at last, out on the water once more. He brought with him about forty men-all Royalists, thank God-former members of the Royal Corps of Marine Gunners, once a body of 10,000, the most expert and perfectly trained naval artillery known. With cunning, the latest scientific artifice, lavish support from the greatest minds and mathematicians, the most modern gun foundries, they had developed a complete "lajeune ecole," a New School for gunnery.

The Revolutionaries, though, had broken them up, parcelled them out in tiny leavenings to land units, unable to abide any elite superior to the Common Man, nor any organisation left over from royal days.

There was a further complication, an equal draft of artillerists more experienced with mortars, for which Lewrie might have backhandedly thanked God. Unfortunately, they were Spanish bombardiers under a lean, haughty coach-whip of an officer; one Comandante (Major) Don Luis Emiliano de Esquevarre y Saltado y Perez. To make matters even worse, he was not a naval officer but a military artillerist, and had about as much English as Lewrie had Spanish. Which wasn't saying much, beyond "dos vinos" and "sucar tusputas." El Comandante would be in charge of the pair of massive thirteen-inch brass mortars sunk in the middle of the waist, where the mainmast used to be, whilst Lieutenant de Crillart and his grizzled veterans would service the six heavy thirty-two-pounders, three to either beam.

Zele, the battery had been named once, a proud two-decker 74 of about 160 feet on the range of her gun deck and over forty feet in beam. Now, she was a "rase," a ship shaved down. Gone were her tall foc's'le and poop deck. Gone, indeed, was her quarterdeck as well, along with an upper gun deck and the original sail-tending gangways.

She'd been reduced to a hulking, squat water beetle, wide and low to the water, with the only shelter for her crew the foremost wedge of the bows on the remaining gun deck, and what went unused on that deck aft, under what was left of the upper gun deck. Her main-mast had been drawn out like a rotten tooth, and her fore and mizzen had been reduced to the fighting-tops-"to a gantline," they would say in the Royal Navy. There was still a forecourse yard on which a sail was set, an inner and an outer jib forward set on stays which ran to a shortened jib boom without a sprit yard doubled atop it. Aft, the mizzen could set a course on the usually bare cro'jack yard, and an ancient lateen spanker awaited.

Lewrie didn't think he'd be winning any regattas with her, though. Her sails were tattered and mildewed, mere afterthoughts. Had she half-a-gale abeam, he reckoned, she might log a quim-hair above two knots. No, to get this beamish, overbuilt and deep-draughted beast about the bay, it would be necessary to use the long, thick sweep oars which lay piled atop the centerline of the gun deck, and extend them out the many ports where artillery no longer nested. Sure enough, he could see thole-pins the size of pier bollards at several empty gunports.

"Christ, what a bloody…" he began to carp. "Ow! Goddamn an' blast it…" He'd stubbed his toe on a knot. The ship was so old, so pared down by holystoning during her half century of service, that hard pine knots had arisen from the softer planking material, and now stood as high as flat-topped islands all over the gun deck, making an archipelago of dark burls against the pale grey of her weathered decking.

"So what do we do, sir?" Scott asked, looking about as dubious as Lewrie did about their prospects.

"We're the coachees, Mister Scott," Lewrie told him, rubbing his foot through his shoe. "The Frogs and the Dons shall make the loudish banging noises whilst we steer them round, wherever they wish to go."

"Hack-work," Scott opined. "We'll need more men, a power more, just to row her, or…" He pointed at the size of the capstans fore and aft. They'd have to row her, then anchor with both bowers, the stream and the kedge, put springs on the cables, and use the secondary capstans, which were about as massive as Cockerel's, to nudge her bearing, so the guns and mortars could aim.

"About forty more hands, I should think," Lewrie scowled. "Landsmen, mostly. Be wonderful, were we to get 'em. But… we're not. This is it. All the Fleet or the garrison may spare right now. Charles?"

"Oui, mon capitaine?"

"We'll need your men to share the sweepwork, when it's needful. La… oars? Les capstans?" Alan flustered, trying for the life of him to recall what the French called things. "Until we're in position and ready to open fire, of course."

"Ah, ze rames et ze cabestan, je comprend. D'accord. I… un'erstan'. Oui, I agree, Alain," de Crillart beamed most agreeably.

"Still, there're the Spanish. We could use their help, too," Alan said. "If we really have quick need of 'em. Uhm, perhaps you should be the one to broach the subject with Don 'whatsit,' Charles. You have so much more Spanish than I."

"Moi?" de Crillart sighed, taking a long look at the nose-high, and immensely bored, expression of their bombardier. "Merde."

Chapter 7

Falconer's Marine Dictionary had quite a lot to say on Mortars and Range, and the precautions the prudent officer might undertake to keep from being blown to flinders. So, too, did de Crillart's tattered copy of Le Blond's Elements of War, and Lewrie's copy of the standard Muller's Treatise on the Artillery.

Zele should have had munitions-tenders astern, where the shells were filled with powder, and rowing boats to fetch shot as needed, and where, during transit, the fuses were inserted, the fused shells being termed "fixed"; then hoisted aboard and stored in a hide- or hair-cloth-covered rack on the safest space of the deck-called "kiting." Well, they didn't have tenders, and too few men to spare to row shells about, so they extemporised.