Lewrie considered going to his desk to pore over the operational details one more time, closely scan the best coastal chart that could be found with a magnifying glass looking for the unforseen reef, shoal, or obstruction, but he’d already done that a dozen times. He yawned, and considered a nap might be of better use. The next day, the weather allowing, he’d be busy with the last-minute preparations and the loading of troops, and at getting his ship to sea the next. Tonight was his last opportunity for a run ashore, and a man would need to be well-rested for a night with Maddalena.
Damme, I keep with her much longer, and I’ll have t’send to London for another two dozen o’ the Green Lantern’s very best cundums, he mused, not trusting the cheaper ones smuggled cross The Lines from Catholic Spain, where the prevention of babies was harshly dis-approved, if not the risk of catching the Pox from a diseased doxy. Lewrie thought that the Spanish might even accept that risk as a scare tactic to keep their benighted people chaste!
Since that blabbed “dear to me”, and Maddalena’s declaration in kind, she had not said anything more upon that head, but she had become fonder, more affectionate, and even more passionate for a certainty, walking closer to him when they went about the town, reaching across restaurant tables to touch hands when they dined, and rewarded him with bright, adoring smiles. In her lodgings, she even hummed to herself, and her bird and her kitten, as if pleased with the entire world, and when in bed … frantically and often!
A nap, definitely, Lewrie told himself; Else a hot kiss and a cold breakfast’d like t’kill me!
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“It seems we’ve created quite a scramble already, sir,” Captain Pomfret said as he peered ashore with his pocket telescope. “Might I borrow your glass, Captain Lewrie?”
“Certainly,” Lewrie said, handing over the much longer and much stronger day-glass as Sapphire and the transport closed the coast off Cabo de Gata under reduced sail.
“Oh, yes!” Pomfret said, with a laugh. “The semaphore tower is whirling away like a Turk Dervish, and the tent camp looks like an ant hill that some boys have kicked … all the workers are hitching or saddling up, and running inland.”
“El diablo negro,” Lt. Westcott said with a laugh, baring his teeth in a brief, harsh grin. “That’s what the Dons called us when we were taking and burning anything that would float, before all of the pieces of our force were assembled.”
“Their troops … they’re standing fast,” Pomfret pointed out, lowering the heavier telescope for a moment. “They’re forming before the battery walls, those dozen cavalry on their left. Lancers, by God! How useless!” he scoffed.
“They won’t be there long, after we open upon ’em,” Westcott said.
“Those lancers might be better placed above the beach,” Pomfret said, handing the day-glass back. “To disrupt our landing, though once we’re ashore in strength they’d have no choice but to retreat up the draw, and it’s too rough ground for them to re-form and charge us … their infantry would be more a threat to us.”
“You only see the one company reported to us?” Lewrie asked.
“So far, yes, sir,” Captain Pomfret replied, “and what passes as roads leading to the Cape are empty. We could see any re-enforcement coming for a long way off, the land’s so open.”
“Tell us when, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie called out to the Sailing Master, who, with a syndicate of older and more mathematically-inclined Midshipmen, had been taking the known heights of the headland to determine when Sapphire was roughly a mile off.
“Almost, sir,” Yelland called back.
“Seven fathom!” a leadsman in the fore chains shouted. “Seven fathom t’this line!”
“Almost, indeed,” Lt. Westcott muttered under his breath.
The Harmony transport stood at least half a mile off Sapphire’s starboard quarters, already beginning to fetch-to into the wind, with her six landing boats already being drawn up from towing to the chain platforms on either beam.
“Six fathom! Six fathom t’this line!”
“Now, sir!” Yelland called out.
“Alter course to Due East, Mister Westcott, and run out the larboard guns,” Lewrie ordered. “I’ll have the upper-deck twelves as the first broadside, and the lower-deck twenty-fours the second.”
“Aye, sir!”
Sapphire’s bows had been pointed at the headland, their view from the quarterdeck partially obscured by the jibs. As the helm was put over, the up-thrust jib boom and bowsprit swung clear, the jibs sweeping right like the parting of a stage curtain to reveal the headland and the battery to one and all. The ship rumbled and thundered as gun-ports were swung up and away, and the great guns were hauled to the port sills, already loaded with solid iron shot. Sailing Due East, their target lay four points off the larboard bows, slowly inching to abeam. A couple of minutes more, and fire could be opened.
“Have ’em prime, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped, eager to be about it, even if he thought it could be a waste of gunpowder at that range. Below, gun-captains would be directing the crews to open the pans of their flintlock strikers to fill them with powder, then cock their locks, making sure that their trigger lines were slack. In the swab-water tubs between each gun, coils of slow-match sizzled, waiting to be wrapped round linstocks that would be applied to the touch-holes of the guns should the flintlock strikers fail, or a flint break at the wrong moment.
“Cast of the log!” Lewrie shouted, and a long minute later, Midshipman Fywell snatched the log line as it paid out and read the knots which had slipped through his fingers.
“Five and one-half knots, sir!” he piped back.
Lewrie looked aloft at the set of the sails, the direction at which the commissioning pendant lazily fluttered, and decided that it could be possible to get off three or four broadsides before the battery was too far aft of abeam for the guns to point in their narrow ports.
“As I told Mister Mountjoy, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie said, “it would be better to anchor a bomb vessel and pound the place with sea-mortars, with thirteen-inch explosive shells. We can only elevate our guns so high, and shootin’ at an incomplete battery wall is too iffy. Go high and over by yards, strike short and tear up the ground under the battery, and the chance of solid hits is damned poor. We might as well shoot at a thin ribbon at a mile’s range.”
“You believe the best we’ll accomplish will be to drive the enemy away, sir?” Pomfret said with a frown. “Hmm, I wonder what Mister Congreve’s rockets could do to the place.”
“Rockets, my God!” Lewrie hooted in sour mirth. “We tried ’em at Boulogne three years ago, and they weaved all over the place, and a couple of ’em came damned close t’hittin’ my ship!”
“They will need a lot more experimenting with before they are useful,” Lt. Westcott said with a shake of his head. “Our experience with them did put the wind up. Seared me out of a year’s growth!”
“Time, I think, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie decided at last, feeling a rising excitement even so. “You may open fire.”
“Aye, sir. By broadsides, fire!” Westcott shouted.
All eleven of the upper gun deck’s 12-pounders lashed out as one in a titanic crash and roar, and the larboard side was swathed in a sudden cloud of sour-reeking smoke.
“My word!” Pomfret gasped. “Impressive, even so!”
“Hope ye remembered t’stuff some candle wax in yer ears,” Lewrie snickered. A moment later and the heavier 24-pounders bellowed even louder, and the concussion was strong enough to make his lungs flutter. Despite his own precautions, Lewrie’s ears rang.
The ship rumbled and trembled as the guns of the larboard battery ran in to the stops of their breeching ropes, were re-loaded, and run out again, trundling tons of metal and gun carriages over the oak decks, with the squeal of wooden truck wheels added.