Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Trade

"Ain' no boy, Mistah," Rodney soberly corrected, though without much anger. "I'z a Ord'nary Sea-man in th' Royal Navy, an' a free man. An' I is a damn' good shot, e'en wif muskets. Somebody he'p me upta th' mizen top, an' gimme somebody t'load fo' me, an' I keeps 'em on de hop. Gimme a half-dozen muskets an' I kill as many French as ya wants, sah."

Rodney took a look around as another series of lightning bolts played about them, and raised his unwounded arm to point at the struggling 64-gun Jamaica. "We keeps on a bit mo', dat sixty-fo' be up wit' us, lookin' fo' a fight, an' dat French'un might take a big skeer, Cap'm. Might sheer offa us," he opined with a shrug, and a wince from the pain that cost him. "Be wot my Cap'm Lewrie'd do, count on it."

"The lad's right, Mister Wigmore," Capt. Weed cried, more than ready to grasp even the slimmest straw of hope. "Get guns, everyone!"

"Not go up mast," Arslan Durschenko told Rodney. "Little man he shoot from… poop, da} High enough, and he cannot climb, kanyeshna. I shoot here, close, where I still can see. Eudoxia… nyet!" Arslan exclaimed, to see his daughter on the deck with sheaf's of arrows, and her recurved horn bow. "I forbid! Dohadeetyeh, go away, you!"

"God helpink them who help selves, Poppa," Eudoxia serenely said, wearing a stiff but brave smile, giving her father a fatalistic shrug. " Fransooski peesas no have me, over dead body, da? Neeksgda! Never! You die Cossack, Poppa, I die Cossack! Urrah!" she whooped.

"Bootyeh zdarovi, kraseeva doch, " Durschenko said with a hitch in his voice, and stroked her rain-wet cheek. "I bless you, beautiful daughter. Ya lyubeet tiy. I love you. And, I am proud."

"Ya lyubeet tiy, Poppa," Eudoxia more-sombrely replied, tears welling in her eyes. "Dosvidanya."

"Arr, fook h'it," Wigmore weakly griped. "Mad as 'atters, th' 'ole lot o' ye. H'ever'body, h'arm yerselves, th' law's comin'! I'll go b'low an' git me pistols. Mind now… ye git me robbed an' ruined, an' I'll haint h'ever' last one o' ye t'yer dyin' days!"

"Keep on with double-shot, Mister Catterall!" Lewrie howled to the waist, and the guns. "Keep on hullin' her!" To the four helmsmen manning the double wheel spokes, he added, "Pinch up a'weather, lads. Another half-point to weather. Crowd up to her to shorten the range!"

He paced, feeling every rumbling, squealing movement of the gun-carriages as they were run out, the shock and buffeting muzzle blasts from each fired gun, and the rapid horse-clopping of gun-truck wheels over the main deck planks, sanded that morning to a pristine paleness, but now rapidly turning smutty grey. Each piece that slammed against the extreme lengths of the breeching ropes, he felt that, too, and he could hear the groan of iron ring-bolts in the bulwarks and decks crying out as tons of artillery slammed back, some of them now so hot that they leaped a foot off the deck before stuttering back down in recoil.

Twenty years in "King's Coat," most of that at sea, and Lewrie could sense the rush of the hull, its staggers, reels, and heel through his toes-could wince, too, at each crashing arrival of round shot from the French guns, and was staggered whenever a high-elevated shot chewed large pieces from the larboard bulwarks and gangway. Staggered, too, by shot that missed completely, and went screaming low over the deck, the French guns unable to be cocked up high enough to dismast his frigate. It was only on a lucky up-roll, when the French warship wallowed to nearly level decks, that bar-shot, chain-shot, or expanding star-shot could punch ragged holes in Proteus 's sails, or carry away a stay or brace. Frustrated, the French were changing over to solid shot, accepting the unfairness of fighting hull-to-hull as the British Navy did, and attempting to out-shoot and smash up Proteus in like manner.

It was a bit too dangerous to remain by the gnawed-up bulwarks, so Lewrie sidled over to amidships, and paced between the binnacle and helm to the hammock nettings overlooking the ship's frenetically busy waist. Six-pounder quarterdeck guns barked, spewing both round-shot and bags of grapeshot or musket balls as the range decreased, despite the Frenchman altering course to weather a bit to keep away. Twenty-four-pounder carronades belched with titanic roars from fully-charged muzzles, hurling double-shotted loads from their stubby muzzles, then came slamming back on their greased wooden pressure slides.

Lightning flickered, so fast that sweaty gunners were frozen in a jittery series of tableaus as they thumb-stalled the vents, swabbed hot barrels, inserted the flannel powder charges, and rammed them home, once removed from the wood or leather cannisters that the youngest and quickest lads, the powder monkeys, brought in scampers from the magazine. Balls were snatched up from the shot-garlands, gun-captains no longer concerned with perfect roundness or freedom from rust or scales, just load! A solid thump from a flexible rope ramrod to seat them, a quick shove to tamp down wet wadding, perhaps a final chore by a ram-merman to seat a sack of grapeshot, musket balls, or langridge, atop ball, and it was time to pulley-haul, again.

Up to the port sills, an overhaul of the run-out tackle and the breeching ropes, then a leap for the train-tackle, maybe the employment of crow-levers and handspikes to shift the whole gun and carriage just a bit to left or right. Some fiddling with the elevating quoin block under the heavy breech to make sure that the piece pointed true at the blackness of the enemy's hull, as low as possible, and a leap away from the gun, feet well clear of tackle and ring-bolts on the deck, lest the men lose their feet as if scythed away, the gun-captain off to one side with his left arm high to show ready, right hand grasping the trigger line to the cocked flint striker, the priming powder in the touch-hole, and… BLAM! to begin it all over, again, quick as panting, and bare-chested, men could serve their brutal pieces.

Fuck proper aim, at this range, fuck drill and showiness; just fire, load, and keep firing, no matter what was happening around them.

A hard strike, low on the waterline it felt like, with Proteus shuddering as if gut-punched, and almost a human groan forced from her timbers. Another slamming hit, and more larboard bulwark went flying in tatters, a yard's length of oak turned into arm-long, prickly splinters like gigantic, well-chewed toothpicks that whirred and fluttered with the sound of frantic birds' wings, some lashing and spearing men's bodies as they went, and raising a chorus of disbelieving screams.

A sudden lull, a horrified, hushed second, before Lt. Catterall could be heard screeching raspy for them to "by broadside.. .fire, and murder the bastards!" and Proteus shuffled to starboard to that shove of directed explosions a few feet alee.

And all Lewrie could do, by that point, was pace, observe, and behave stoically, for now that both warships were close-aboard of each other on the same course, their jib-booms and bowsprits almost level with the other, and the range down to less than sixty yards, it was up to his trusted warrants and petty officers, the steadiness of his gun-captains, the stolid courage of officers and midshipmen, the speed and stamina of his crew, despite the horrors they could see on every hand. Did he die, the next minute, it would make no matter. This was what a captain had to do, and no amount of hopping about, waving sword, and crying, "Damn my eyes!" could change a thing 'til it was concluded. And there were horrors.

A decapitated Marine hanging half off the chewed-up gangway, to spurt, then ooze, his blood onto the gunners below, making the deck so slippery that a second bucket of sand had to be cast. The young Marine drummer boy's corpse, and his shattered drum, was slung against the main mast trunk, soon to be disposed of overside through a lee gun-port, to make fighting room. Half the crew of a quarterdeck 6-pounder was gone, strewn like bloody piles of laundry amidships. Another sailor from one of the engaged-side carronades was being carted below on a mess table by the Surgeon's loblolly boys, gasping like a landed fish with a two-foot length of bulwark splinter in his chest.