The traditional shot was fired, a mild yelp compared to heavy guns’ roars, and a lone cloud of spent powder smoke drifted quickly alee. A long minute later and a flat bang came from the Spaniard. He would fight!

CHAPTER FORTY

“Give us a point free, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered after a look aloft at the commissioning pendant. The wind was holding from the Sou’east, and the Spanish frigate was sailing Sou’west by West, as she and her sister ship had from the first. The range was about half a sea-mile, but that would slowly close as Sapphire fell down upon her.

“She’s opened,” Westcott pointed out as the frigate’s side lit up in jets of fire and a dense cloud of smoke.

“Quoins fully out, remind the gun-captains,” Lewrie demanded, “and have ’em load chain-shot and expanding bar-shot for the next broadside. You may open, Mister Westcott.”

“On the up-roll, by broadside … fire!” and HMS Sapphire shook, trembled, and groaned to the recoil of her guns once more.

“Captain Pomfret?” Lewrie called out, looking round the quarterdeck for the Army officer. “You’ve a watch with a second hand? Excellent! I’d admire did you time the Spanish broadsides and let me know how long it takes ’em t’re-load and run back out. The longer, the better for us.”

“By broadside … fire!”

A second salvo from the Spanish frigate was headed their way, moaning and keening louder and shriller as the roundshot approached, then turning basso as balls passed over and beyond. The frigate aimed high, hoping to cripple Sapphire’s sails and rigging, and taut canvas was puckered and holed aloft. Several lines parted, and some blocks came raining down onto the weather deck. One ball plucked a topman and a Marine from the mizen mast’s fighting top, flinging them down to the poop deck. The Surgeon’s loblolly boys were called for to tend to them, but what was left of them was beyond any care.

“By broadside … fire!”

The Spanish frigate had begun two points abaft of abeam to the two-decker, but she was coming up quickly. Within a few minutes, she might even fetch up directly abeam, then slowly work her way ahead of Sapphire, making an escape.

We can’t keep on like this, Lewrie thought; Else she’ll get away. Damned if I’ll let her, but …

“Alter course one more point to loo’rd, Mister Westcott. We’ll have to engage her more closely. Pass word to the gun decks to mind their elevation,” Lewrie snapped. “Cast of the log!”

It took a long, infuriating minute for the report to come back that Sapphire was only making a bit over seven knots.

“Damme!” he spat, sure that the Spaniard was still making ten or better!

“By broadside, fire!” and the sea round the Spanish frigate was frothed by the impacts of roundshot, and several holes appeared on her, just before the view was blotted out by a return broadside. The enemy shot moaned, keened, and thrummed about Sapphire, raising great splashes alongside, smashing into her thick oak sides, making her hull drum and screech. There was a louder bang, a metallic clang as if a church bell had fallen from a high belfry, and people were shouting below. Midshipman Ward came to the quarterdeck, his uniform askew, and it and his face smudged with spent powder. “We’ve a twenty-four-pounder dis-mounted, sir!” he shouted, “struck right on the muzzle, and off its carriage! Two men under it, sir!”

“Calmly, Mister Ward,” Lewrie sternly chid him. “The men are looking to us for steadiness. My compliments to Mister Elmes, and he’s t’see to it.”

“Ehm, aye, sir,” Ward said with a gulp, then dashed below.

“Pardons, sir, but their timing?” Captain Pomfret said, waving his pocket watch. “It’s taking them just about one minute ’twixt their broadsides, and the last one appeared rather ragged, taking about ten seconds from the first shot to the last. Almost ‘fire at will’, hey?”

“Now, that’s what I hoped to hear, sir!” Lewrie crowed, quite pleased. “They’re gettin’ tired and dis-organised.”

“By broadside, fire!”

Crash-bang-tinkle! A Spanish shot smashed into the starboard quarter gallery of the officer’s wardroom and carried straight through the other side. Another crashed into the starboard bulwarks, scattering stowed hammocks, ripping a chunk from the bulwark in a cloud of splinters, and cutting a brace-tender in two!

“You may not have that spare cabin you’ve been using, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie said, leaning far out over the starboard bulwarks to survey the damage, “or the ‘necessaries’, either.”

“Lord, what was that?” Lt. Westcott cried, pointing at their foe. “I could have sworn I saw a flash of flame and smoke aboard her!”

There was a sooty cloud of smoke forward of amidships, a rising cloud that lingered long after her last gush of powder smoke drifted alee. Lewrie raised a telescope and saw ant-like Spanish sailors with water buckets, dipping them overside into the sea and hauling them up. A longer perusal showed that the frigate’s side had been chewed up, two gun-ports had been turned into one, her larboard side best bower anchor was gone, and the long, out-jutting cat-head beam was amputated, and aloft. “Hah!” he cheered. Both her fore and main masts were missing her royal and t’gallant upperworks! “That’ll slow her down! She won’t get beyond us! Mister Westcott, steer one more point alee!”

“Helmsmen, make her head Due West. Bosun Terrell, ease braces and sheets,” Westcott called out through a brass speaking-trumpet.

“Damme, but I do believe she’s sheeting home her main course!” the Sailing Master, Mr. Yelland, shouted. “She is!”

“Hell of a risk, that,” Lewrie commented with a scowl.

“Why, sir?” Pomfret asked.

“There’s always a risk that it’d catch fire from the discharge of the guns, sir,” Lewrie told him, “That’s why ours is reefed out of danger, and if this scow was any faster, it’d be brailed all the way up.”

“Steady on Due West, thus!” Westcott shouted. “By broadside, fire!”

The Spanish frigate still insisted on sailing close-hauled to the winds, and was spreading her main course to make up for the loss of her fore and main mast upperworks, but their course, and Sapphire’s course, would eventually result in an intersection.

Question is, who crosses whose bows first? Lewrie wondered.

“Carronades and six-pounders in the next broadside, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie snapped. “Shoot her to wood scraps! Pass word to aim to hull her!”

The Spanish frigate was swimming up to only one point abaft of abeam, out-footing Sapphire, and firing yet another broadside of her own, yet this one was very ragged; a pair of guns, several single discharges, another pair, then some more seconds apart. Lewrie reckoned that if Pomfret was right, it would be at least another full minute or longer before she could fire again.

“All guns, on the up-roll, by broadside … fire!” and their ship rocked as if gut-punched by the recoil. A vast fogbank of smoke blossomed into being, swept downwind by the breeze, smothering their view of the enemy, and rolling down onto the frigate.

“Make our head West by North, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie yelled. “Close the range!” He knew that he was getting “gun-drunk”, caught up in the fight to the point that fine tactics were abandoned, but Lewrie didn’t care, by then. The evil reek of spent powder and the titanic roar of his guns were too intoxicating for cool, detached thinking any longer.

“By broadside, fire!” and when the pall of gunsmoke drifted alee, there was the enemy frigate, with her bowsprit shot away and her jibs flagging to leeward, with her larboard-side main course yard a shattered stub that had ripped that great sail in half as it had fallen. There were more holes in her bulwarks, along her row of gun-ports. At last, she was beginning to haul her wind and bear away towards the coast, but that was many miles off, by then. She had come up fully abeam to Sapphire but she would not out-foot her any longer, and it was the two-decker which would do the over-taking, still holding the wind gage.