No, it wasn’t, for Bisquit chewed up the token morsel and went puppy-eyed for more, licking his chops and sweeping the deck clean with a rapidly wagging tail.
“Good morning, sir,” Lieutenant Harcourt greeted him, doffing his hat. Greetings also came from Marine Lieutenants Keane and Roe.
“On deck for the chilly air, sirs?” Lewrie asked them. “Or, to satisfy your curiosity?”
“Curiosity, sir,” Lt. Keane allowed, followed a second later by his subordinate, Lt. Roe, who confessed, “Bored, sir.”
“I know it’s not our proper place,” Lt. Keane went on, “and I know that our meagre Marine contingent would make no difference if a battle is to be fought … sometime … but I do wish that we were ashore with the army.”
“If only to see what’s happening, sir,” the younger Lt. Roe added. “If all the warships present mustered their Marines, we might amount to a battalion.”
“They’d only put you in reserve, sirs,” Lewrie had to tell them, “guardin’ what’s left of the depot, or mannin’ the sea walls. You have just as good a view from here of … whatever.”
“Ah, good morning, sir,” Lt. Westcott said as he, too, came to the quarterdeck from the wardroom below. “Good morning, gentlemen.”
“Good morning, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said. “Bored, or just curious? There seems to be a lot of both, this morning.”
“Both, sir,” Westcott said with one of his fierce, brief grins. “Though I could use a long nap after cutlass drill. That still on?”
“Aye, if only t’keep the hands awake,” Lewrie said. “Have ’em work up a mild sweat, keep warm…”
“Hark, sir!” Mr. Yelland interrupted, going to the bulwark facing the shore, and cupping a hand to his ear. “I could swear that I hear cannon fire.”
That made them all peer round the vast anchorage to see if one of the ships of the line was holding live-firing practise, or if a storm might be coming, one with thunder and lightning; but there was no sign of either.
“Aye, I thought so!” Yelland said, pointing ashore. “There’s gun-smoke rising along yon line of hills.”
That prompted everyone to fetch out their telescopes, or grab a spare from the compass binnacle racks, and crowd the bulwarks for a good look. Slowly, the sound of cannon rose in volume, and spent powder smoke spread along the whole length of the Monte Mero, sickly yellow-white and lingering, merging together into a long pall that hardly seemed to move despite the breeze off the sea, with taller thunderheads of smoke rising to mark the positions of enemy batteries and British batteries as they duelled with each other for supremacy.
“Well, the French have come at last,” Lewrie summed up. “We can only hope they arrived in as poor condition as our army when it got here. Hah! Maybe they’re so hungry they’re fightin’ to seize what’s left of the food in the depot!”
“I simply don’t understand this, sir,” said Midshipman Leverett, who was standing nearby without even a pocket telescope to watch events unfold. “The army’s had bags of time to evacuate, long before the French showed up. Why are we still here, why’s the army still here?”
“Well, the depot had to be emptied to supply, feed, and re-equip the troops, first,” Marine Lieutenant Keane said, “and there were the sick and wounded to be seen to. That took time. General Moore had to set out defences should the French arrive in the middle of that. If he had begun the evacuation, yesterday say, his defence line would now be a lot closer to the town and the docks, and the French would capture half the army … just roll over the few regiments still on shore.”
“And, perhaps it’s because the French are starving, frozen solid, their own cavalry and artillery lost in those mountains in pursuit,” Marine Lieutenant Roe, Keane’s second-in-command, added, “and Moore now has the upper hand. If he holds, and bloodies them, the French can’t interfere when he does begin to evacuate.”
“Or, maybe General Moore is tired of being chased all round Spain, and wants to get in a hard lick at them to show the French, and Napoleon, who’s the better soldier,” Lt. Westcott commented with one brow up. “What? Just saying,” he had to add, after almost all officers on the quarterdeck turned to look at him, amazed by such a suggestion. “In his shoes, wouldn’t you want to get in the last blow?”
We do insane things for our pride, Lewrie thought, peering intently shoreward; for God, King, and Country … and ourselves.
The sound of the bombardment, and counter-bombardment was louder, now, the concussions spreading out from the Monte Mero ridges to make the bare limbs of trees ashore tremble, to create wee ripples of harbour water that spread outward from the docks at Santa Lucía. He cocked an ear and imagined that he could almost hear the twigs-in-a-fire crackling of musketry, but he shook his head, thinking that it was much too soon for the French to advance their infantry columns and come down from the further ridges of the Peñasquedo to attempt to march up the slopes of the Monte Mero. He hoped that Moore was husbanding his soldiers on the reverse slopes, as Wellesley had done at Vimeiro, even as Sir Brent Spencer had planned at Ayamonte.
They’ll keep bangin’ away with artillery for a time yet, he told himself; unless they really are starvin’! If the French do get atop the ridge … hmm.
“Mister Yelland,” he called out over his shoulder, his view intent upon the near shores, “those transports East of the quays at Santa Lucía … they’re anchored rather close to shore. How deep are the waters there, d’ye think? Do your charts show?”
“Close to shore, sir?” Yelland asked, rubbing his chin.
Always was slow on the up-take, Lewrie thought.
“Should it be necessary to close the shore and fire our guns to support the army should it be driven back, how close could we get, I’m asking,” Lewrie patiently told him.
“I’ll go look, sir,” the Sailing Master said, taking off his hat and scratching his scalp for a second; “Close” and “Shore” together in one sentence put the wind up every officer responsible for the safe navigation of a King’s Ship.
“I will join you,” Lewrie said, closing the tubes of his telescope and steeling his nostrils for an assault as he went to the improvised chart space.
As Lewrie expected, the shore was steep-to, sloping off sharply, and littered with large boulders, but the old Spanish charts did show at least five fathoms of depth within a quarter-mile of the coast. East of the commercial piers of Santa Lucía there was a deep notch, a cove or inlet that resembled a large, circular bite out of a sandwich, just beneath the heights of Santa Lucía Hill, which was the end of the Monte Mero ridge. With the use of a long brass ruler, Lewrie could determine that if they entered that cove, they would have a direct line-of-sight to the Monte Mero, and could take any French mass of troops, advancing triumphantly on Corunna, in enfilade, and if they came on in their massed columns, Sapphire’s guns could rake their flanks with all her weight of metal.
“There’s this little stream that runs down from the hills, from Elvina to spill out into the bay below Santa Lucía,” Lewrie pointed out with a pencil stub. “If Moore is dis-lodged from the ridge, that’d be a good line t’try and hold, and we could smash the French columns right on their right flank. It’s what … hmm, five fathoms, or the Spanish equivalent … a quarter-mile from the rocky shore…”
“At mean low tide,” Yelland dubiously agreed, “though there’re these two rocky outcrops, wee islands, and the depths between…”
“We get between ’em, right here,” Lewrie said, making an X to mark the place on the chart. “If we have to, Mister Yelland.”
“If we can thread our way through the transports crammed about the quays, sir,” Yelland cautioned. “They are anchored close to ease the rowing distance from shore to ship. Corunna’s as crowded as the Pool of London, or worse, even with the loaded ships moved seawards.”