Dewey Lambdin - King, Ship, and Sword

"One can see them from the deck, sir!" Midshipman Grainger cried from the starboard mizen shrouds and a perch most of the way up them. Lewrie raised his telescope, focussed, then… By God, there they are! he exulted in silence. They were real, not Will-O'-The-Wisps, and not more than six or seven miles off.

I was right! Lewrie felt like shouting; this Frog did hide his arse behind the Chandeleurs, or gave himself the option of landing his troops up North. Damme… I was right? What's the world comin' to?

Inside that pearly mist, there were four complete sets of sails, rustling like spooks on the scant winds; there were darker smudges of hulls below them, and the mast-heads! They were above the mist and clear as day… now only five miles off, he reckoned!

"Deck, there!" a new voice called. Midshipman Rossyngton had gone aloft to join the lookouts, and it was his thin piping that they heard. "Lead two-decker stands on! The trailing ships haul their wind! One point off the starboard bows! Avast! Moving to two points off!"

Lewrie could see the hair-thin mast-heads pivotting, aligning themselves atop each other, as the three French warships came about to point roughly bows-on to their own line of battle.

They're lasting! Lewrie realised; sailin a bow-and-quarter line… oblique to us! Clever devil, yonder.

The French would close them, with a frigate nearest to them and their two-decker 74 perhaps a cable further away, off the frigate's larboard quarters, and the trailing frigate even further away, off the 74's larboard quarter, like the last three fingers of Lewrie's left hand.

"Worn to larboard tack, sir?" Mr. Caldwell said, scratching his scalp with a pencil stub, up under his hat. "They'll have to come off the wind 'fore they can cross our bows and rake us."

"A clever way to close the range quickly," Lt. Westcott mused.

"No, sirs… not clever at all!" Lewrie suddenly whooped, all but startling his First Officer and Sailing Master. "A new signal for Modeste, Mister Grainger… 'Submit… New Course… West by North. Enemy Is Lasking on Larboard Tack'!"

"Aye, sir!" Grainger replied, hustling back to his duties by the flag lockers, perplexed by the term.

"He should've changed course no more than two points, in line-of-succession, not all at once," Lewrie pointed out. "That would've placed him cross our bows, but no… he had 'em all wheel as one and wear to larboard tack. We turn more Westerly, he'll barge up to us with all of our guns directed at the nearest frigate, and the two-decker's fire is masked… as is the trailin' frigate's!

"They stay as they are and think t'sail down our starboard beam for broadsides on opposin' tacks, they're stacked on top of each other, 'less the followin' ships luff up in order t'fall in trail of the lead ship!" Lewrie urgently explained, arms swinging and his hands clapping before him, almost skipping about the deck in glee.

"And, do they come back to their original course, they'll end up bows-on to our line, and under raking fire from all four of ours!" Lt. Westcott quickly grasped. "Just too clever by half, the poor bastard."

"Now, let's all pray Captain Blanding sees what we see," Lewrie replied, turning to peer intently at Modeste's signals halliards. "The troop ship might escape us whilst we're engaged with these three, but I s'pose it can't be helped. Better for us, had Cockerel or Pylades led our line."

If Captain Blanding sent one of his lighter 32-gunned frigates off in chase that instant, from the rear of their line, it would take hours for one of them to fetch the two-decker transport into even long gun-range… perhaps only a few miles off Pass a La Loutre, or have to chase her right up to Fort Balise and the Head of Passes in what, at the moment, was still officially Spanish territory!

"Signal, sir!" Midshipman Grainger crisply reported. '"Form Line of Battle… Course West by North… With All Despatch'!"

"We've got 'em, Mister Westcott!" Lewrie exulted with a growl. "By God, we've got em!"

They're coming back to line-ahead, sir!" Midshipman Rossyngton shouted down from the main-mast royal yard, a perch even more precarious than the cross-trees.

"Thankee, Mister Rossyngton!" Lewrie shouted back. "Now come to the deck and take your station at Quarters! Hellish-odd," he said in a much softer voice to Westcott as he lifted his glass to peer out for a sign of the foe. "They see our mast-trucks and commissioning pendants, we see theirs, and all else is damn-all squiffy."

"Aha, sir!" Lt. Westcott said, pointing with his telescope. "I can just make out the lead frigate… there, sir! She'll be directly bows-on to us, square on our starboard beam, does she not alter course!"

Lewrie swivelled, found a ghostly bow sprit and jib-boom, about a mile to windward; found jibs and a foretopmast stays'l, then the tan-in-white square shapes of the leading frigate's forecourse and fore topsail. "To windward of us… now they're silhouetted 'gainst the dawn, the damned fools. French!" he sniffed. "They just can't keep it simple. All that elegant jeune йcole bumf they came up with two wars ago, back in the Seventeen Sixties. What odds'd ye give me, Mister Westcott, do they load with star-shot and chain-shot, and try t'dismast us, as their doctrine demands?"

"I doubt they'll have time to turn a whole battery upon us for that practise, sir," Lt. Westcott replied. He was smiling, not one of his brief, tooth-baring flash-grins, but a gladsome, widespread mouth. "There's her main-mast, a hint of her mizen, and… "

Lewrie looked up at the commissioning pendant; their line was on starboard tack, with the light winds from the Nor'east by East, and the French, after their last manoeuvre into line-ahead formation, were now sailing with those winds fine on their larboard quarters.

"And there's their seventy-four, just emerging astern of her," Westcott added as the ponderous behemoth loomed up more solid from the mists, about a cable astern of the frigate.

"Stand by, Mister Spendlove!" Lewrie alerted the Second Officer, in charge of the main guns in the waist. "You will make sure that all pieces fire as they bear, and bow-rake her!"

"Not quite yet… not quite…," Lt. Westcott was muttering to himself, flexing his knees to ride the easy scend and roll of the ship as he peered intently at the lead ship, judging the range.

"Here it comes," Lewrie said with a grunt as the Frenchman's two chase guns exploded from her forecastle at last. Those projectiles did not sound like round-shot; there was a whole, thin chorus of light shot that went soaring high above the decks; expanding bar-shot, chain-shot, and star-shot. "Should've laid a wager, Mister Westcott," he said with another pleased grunt as sails aloft were pierced, a few lines parted, and some splinters were torn from the top-masts.

"I make the range a bit over a quarter-mile, sir," Lt. Westcott informed him.

"Good enough for me, sir," Lewrie told him, then lifted a brass speaking-trumpet. "Mister Spendlove! As you bear, you may open upon her!"

"Aye aye, sir! As you bear! Fire!" Spendlove shouted.

As if paced by a metronome atop a parlour piano forte, the guns began to bellow, from the 12-pounder chase gun forrud, then down the long battery of fourteen 18-pounders, gushing great clouds of powder smoke and amber sparks that merged into a single thunderhead along the starboard side, then lingered and was blown back into the gunners' faces by the light winds, and only slowly thinned and trailed away to the un-engaged larboard side, blotting away their view of the foe for a long minute or so. Aft, HMS Modeste began her first broadside, as well, a greater, louder roaring from her heavier 18-pounders and 24-pounders, spewing out an even denser cloud of spent powder smoke.