Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Trade

Up to level with the bulwarks, into a snarl of rigging, broken spars, and sailcloth, but a wide gap had been blown through it, and it was with a great sense of relief that he flung his right arm, then his right leg, over the splintery timbers, and crawled to his feet, on the enemy's decks, at last!

Shoot that bugger, close enough for his pistol to set his shirt on fire, before he could skewer him with a pike! Drop empty pistol… draw sword… fill his left hand with the other pistol, and draw back to half-cock on both barrels with his right forearm! Look about, and discover his own sailors and Marines either side of him, thank God!

"Take it to 'em, lads! Skin the bastards!" he shouted, taking a tentative step forward to peer over the inner edge of the gangway to see… a butcher's yard! Guns were dis-mounted, massive barrels and truck-carriages overturned on squashed men, splintered, dis-emboweled, half-charred gunners betrayed by their pieces when they burst, or the powder cartridges had blown up, turning flesh the colour of rare roast beef! And a sheet of gore on the main deck, reflecting battle-lanthorn light like a reddish full moon on a calm lake! Mounds of bodies about the main and foremast trunks, smaller piles of arms, legs, and bits of men, as well… and two ragged rows of screaming, writhing wounded by the unengaged larboard side, still waiting to be carried below to their Surgeons, the French cockpit surgery already filled to bursting with the worst-off.

Triage, the Frogs call it? Lewrie numbly recalled, appalled and about to retch. If these men were the better-off,- he did not want to see what an urgent case looked like!

"Reddition, m'sieur!" a young, wide-eyed French officer in the ship's waist called out, taking Lewrie, in his cocked hat with a pair of epaulets on his shoulders, as in command. "Nous surrendre, please? Nous amener.. . strike, oui? Quarter, m'sieur capitaine." He tossed away a pistol and let his sword dangle from his right wrist by a strap of leather. "Ze fregat L'Uranie surrendre, m sieur!

"Tell them!" Lewrie roared, pointing his hanger at the officer, then at the melee still going on from bow to stern. "Order your men, votre matelots, to… desarmer! Lay down their arms… vite, vite!"

Lewrie looked aft, to where his own sailors had swept the quarterdeck clean of resistance, and were even then hauling down the French Tricolour, without their foes' approval.

"Quarter!" Lewrie bellowed, hands cupped to his mouth, to fore, aft, and amidships. "Quarter, lads, they've struck! Their ship is ours!" And, to the shuddery young French officer, he added, "Best ye sheath that damned sword o' yours, m'sieur, 'fore one o' my men takes ye for a die-hard, comprendre?"

Guns, pikes, and edged weapons clattered from numb hands to the decks, and physically and spiritually exhausted sailors sagged to their knees… some completely spent and wheezing, some in shame, with tears streaking clean channels through powder-smut on their faces, and some ready to weep with joy for being alive and whole. Only a rare few remained on their feet, glaring defiance-wisely dis-armed defiance, as British tars, sore losers, and spiteful victors, jeered them and spat curses that they could have killed all of them, if allowed.

"Mister Langlie?" Lewrie called out in the relatively peaceful silence, his ears still ringing from an hour and a half of cannon fire, and with the fingers of his left hand crossed for luck.

"Sir?" came the First Officer's weary voice.

"Parties to secure the on-deck prisoners, Mister Langlie. Then, Leftenant Devereux, his Marines, and a party of our Jacks to go below, and chivvy any skulkers on deck. Make sure they're all dis-armed, not even a pen-knife on 'em and no arms near them, should some have a sudden change of heart. And drink, Mister Langlie! Don't care it it's a vintage bottle, you discover spirits, drain 'em into the bilges. Keep a keen eye on our people, keen as you will on the French right?"

"Aye aye, sir!"

Lewrie had seen defeat and victory before, both shivering losers and strutting winners, aloft and a'low, who'd use the chaos of the aftermath to guzzle themselves senseless, and did Proteus's sailors get in drink, the French could turn the tables on them and cut their throats!

"Mister Catter… no," Lewrie began to call out, before remembering that he'd seen him fall. "Mister Adair?" Another crossing of his fingers. To his relief, Lt. Adair piped up, too, and came to his side.

"Get with the Bosun and Carpenter, Mister Adair," Lewrie ordered. "Any spare hands, you may now put them to the chain-pumps to keep our own ship afloat 'til morning. A survey below of this'un, as well, sir. I'd admire could we get her to a Prize-Court, after all the trouble we went through t'win her."

"Aye aye, sir," Lt. Adair replied, performing a shaky doffing of his hat in salute.

"And, Mister Adair… you are now our Second Lieutenant," he added in a sombre tone as he sheathed his hanger and un-cocked his pistol.

"Very well, sir," Adair gravely answered.

He felt it, then, that shuddery weakness and lassitude that he had suffered at the end of every sea-fight. There were an hundred details to be seen to before dawn, a myriad of repairs to be made aboard both frigates before he could feel sanguine, but God, he felt spent! What he most craved, that moment, was a bracing drink, a pint of water to put moisture back into his tongue and gums, then a brimming bumper of brandy or Yankee-Doodle corn-whisky… followed by a lie-down and perhaps a nap, maybe a long one since he wasn't getting any younger, but… "Urn, m'sieur capitaine?" It was the wide-eyed young officer below him on the main deck, who still stood there, looking up at him, looking a bit embarassed to bother him. "Mon epee… sword, m 'sieur, " he said, offering up his small-sword, now sheathed in its scabbard, in formal sign of personal surrender.

It was "bad form," and un-gentlemanly, for Lewrie to accept it. The proper form would be to wave it off, tell the man whose throat one wished to slit and bowels one tried to spill what an heroic defence he had put up, so "honourably," but, Lewrie wasn't feeling especially charitable that evening, so he took hold of it and gave the young fellow a grave nod. Damned if he'd let any armed Frog ponce about with a sword… he might relent and give it back, once sure that both ships would float and sail. "Merci, "he said, its hilt to his face in salute.

He stumbled aft along the enemy warship's starboard gangway, a tangle of dead and wounded, of splintered wood, sails, rigging, and hidden ring-bolts, to the enemy's quarterdeck, where some of his sailors were capering and laughing that particular uproarious good humour that only whole survivors could laugh, atop slain foes.

"Cap'm, sir!" Ordinary Seaman Martyn chortled, handing him yet another sheathed sword. " 'Ere's 'er cap'm's blade, sir. Won't 'ave a need f'r it in 'is life no more, Cap'm, nosirree!"

"Mus' be worth fifty guineas, sor!" Able Seaman Clancey hooted, producing yet another. "An' thayr First Off 'cer's sword, 'ere, 'tis a fine'un, too, sor. Poor feller's not long f'r this world, neither, we reckon," Clancey callously snickered, pointing back towards the wheel, where an officer who'd had a leg shot off at the hip, and the other one bent at an un-natural angle, was being tended by two French sailors.

"A guinea for each of you, lads," Lewrie told them, "but, let's not be makin' a career of lootin' the dead… even Frenchmen." "Thankee, sor!"

"And, let's stay cold sober, too, 'fore I have ye all at 'Mast,' " Lewrie sternly reminded them.