H. M. S. Cockerel (30 page)

“Thought that was what wars were all about,” Lieutenant Scott muttered, just loud enough to be heard, and to elicit a laugh.

“Silence!” Lewrie snapped, his neck burning with anger. “Listen to me carefully. Just because we're ashore doesn't mean you're any less out of the Navy's eye. We're not here to gambol, we're not here for a ‘Rope-Yarn Sunday.' I, or
any
officer, will read the Articles of War the same as if we were on
Cockerel
's
decks,” he said, turning to glare a warning to Scott. “We may guard the harbour and basin, or we might end up in those bloody great hills behind us, manning guns, eye-to-eye with French soldiers, living rough as any Redcoat. And the man who forgets that, the man who acts like this is a lark, the one who doesn't believe I'm a taut hand, well . . . God help his soul.
And
his back.”

He made an effort to lock eyes with every hand, even those back in the rear of the guardroom who were shying sheepish and hangdog at his sternness.

“Right,” he concluded. “Let's be about it. Mister Scott? A word with you, sir.”

“Aye, sir,” Scott nodded, clenching his massive jaws.

“Outside, sir,” Lewrie ordered, walking out on him. He paced a good ten yards, well out of earshot, before rounding on him. “Damn you, sir. Don't you ever make mock of me in front of the hands. Don't you ever dare make light of why we've come ashore. Heard of Yorktown, have you, Mister Scott?”

“Aye, sir, and I know you made a name—”

“Damn you, that is
not
what I mean, sir!” Lewrie thundered. “Take a good look about, Mister Scott. Fifteen bloody miles of border, and we mean to hold it with less than four thousand men? With three armies on the way to crush us? Aye, they're
Frog
armies, peasants in rags to you, not worth the powder to blow their tag-ragand-bobtail arses away, hey? And we're here, you and I, with charge of twenty hands. And if one of them dies because you didn't take this bloody serious . . . damn it! They are our men, sir! We own the grave responsibility to care for them, to feed 'em, tuck 'em in, fight 'em . . . and maybe die with 'em, if it comes to that.”

“I see, sir,” Scott sobered, a little of his rancour receding.

“Nothing like a lark, is it, Mister Scott?” Alan demanded, though more softly. “You may resent me to the Gates of Hell if you wish. Feel sorry for yourself gettin' slung ashore all you want. I mean to keep as many of these men alive as I can, sir, do we win or lose. But I can't do that with you sulking behind my back, and giving them the impression we're off to ‘Fiddler's Green.' They're as much your responsibility as a sea officer as they are mine, you know. I
will
have your support and your loyalty, sir, no matter your grudges. Or else. As my father'd say, ‘shut up and soldier.'”

“Aye aye, sir,” Scott grunted, nodding vigorously, his face red. Whether with more resentment or shame, Lewrie didn't much care at that moment. Just as long as Scott did his job.

C H A P T E R 5

T
he
first use of their services, though, was nothing even close to bellicose. Toulon was still plagued by the presence of nearly 5,000 truculent French sailors, most of whom either openly or secretly supported the Revolution, with a fair minority who might not have adored the Republic, exactly, but were mortal certain they could not abide British or Spanish troops on the sacred soil of La Belle France. The town rang to their disobedience, their drunkenness, daily. And, seeing how many they were, even disarmed, and how few Coalition troops were present, it would only be a matter of time before they arose, weaponless or not, or began to engage in sabotage.

Lewrie's party, with others, readied five ships from the basin to take them away. Five of the least serviceable—an eighteen-gunned brig of war named
Pluvier,
the 3rd Rate 74's
Orion,
Entreprenant, Patriote
and the
Trajan
—were taken out of ordinary, stripped of all their guns but two eight-pounders, stripped of all their powder but for twenty light, saluting or signalling charges, and stocked with food and water. Then they were warped or towed to the Great Road, and the French seamen, and those officers who wished to depart, were put aboard. Under flags of truce, they departed for Bordeaux, for Rochefort, L'Orient and Brest, on the Biscay coast, on 14 September.

“And that,” Lewrie told himself over a glass of wine that evening at Lieutenant de Crillart's favourite open-air bistro, “will make Toulon a much quieter place, all round.”

Fumm! Umumm.
Crack-whish!

“What the devil?” Alan cried, leaping from his bed. He flung the shutters to his room open to peer out, to look down at the seaman sentry at the door of the guardhouse below him in the small courtyard.

Fumm, fumm!
And echoes. Followed by two more crack-whishes.

“Some'un's firin' cannons, I reckon, sir,” the sentry called up to him in reply to the perplexity on his face. “Soun' like h'it's ah comin' fum yonner, sir.” The sentry pointed vaguely sou'west.

Clad in only his shirttails, Lewrie fetched his telescope and leaned out the window. Bang went the shutters on a neighbouring room and Scott peered out blearily, rubbing sleep from his face with rough hands. He'd made a rare night of it in the city, a proper, caterwauling “high ramble.” A moment later, a pert female face, capped with a mass of dark brown curls, appeared next to his. She was clad only in a sheet. Wide-eyed and excited, she seemed equally curious as to the source of the noise and what her neighbour looked like.

“Morning, Mister Scott,” Lewrie took time to smile.

“Argh,” Scott muttered, wiggling his tongue and grimacing with the taste of cognac still in his mouth. “Morning, Mister Lewrie, sir,” he managed, thick-headed. “What the Devil's goin' on?”

“Bonjour, m'sieur Luray,”
the girl called cheerfully.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle,”
Lewrie replied with an approximate bow.

“Phoebe,” Scott supplied gruffly, dry-swabbing his face some more and knuckling his eyes, childlike. “I think she said. Scrawny little chit, but . . .” He shrugged and gave her a pinch, making her yelp.

But damned fetching, Lewrie took more time to note.

“Sounds like it's coming from beyond Fort Malbousquet,” Alan said, returning to professional matters. “Maybe that Général Carteau finally marched from Marseilles, got his guns up during the night. I . . . ”

There was a slowly rising tumulus of powder beyond Malbousquet, and the hills to the sou'west, sour-looking, grayish tan.
Fummfummfumm!
this time in rapid succession, and another belch of smoke rose into the sky, a twining, twisting ball to join the rest.
Umummum
they echoed on the hills. Yet there were no strikes on Fort Malbousquet, the most important redoubt which guarded the western approaches. Lewrie swung his telescope right and left, to see what they were shooting for. There!

Crack-crack-crack!

Explosive shells burst when their fuses burned down. But burst in the Little Road, around the anchored prize-frigate
Aurore
and two floating batteries. Two went off very close to the water, roiling the road waters with spreading trout splashes of ripples; the third burst too high, due to a shorter fuse, scattering iron slivers that created a miniature hail storm across the waters beneath an unfolding rose of powder smoke.

Fumm-fumm!
Came a double report, from a second set of guns this time, a little farther off to the south. These were improperly fused, too. They fell into the roadstead, erecting tall twin candlesticks of spray as they struck and sank. Followed a moment later, as the fuses reached their powder charges, by dirty humps of smoke-gray foam, which hoisted aloft in gigantic featherlike plumes as tall as mast trucks.

“Masked batteries,” Lewrie said to one and all. “Heavy guns, by God.”

“Siege guns,” Scott opined, awake now. “Twenty-four-pounders?”

“Firing masked, though . . .” Lewrie countered, shaking his head.

Fumm-fumm-fumm!
He began counting the seconds to himself. Now that he was listening for it, Alan could hear the faint shrieking moan of shells lofted through the early morning air. Three new pillars rose in the Little Road, hopelessly wide of the ships. So far.

“Mile and a half, I think, Mister Scott,” he called out. “Don't think they're siege guns. Firin' masked, they'd have to elevate high, and anything over—what? eight degrees or so—'d burst the barrels.”

“Howitzers,” Scott guessed.

“What's an army lug about,” Lewrie shouted back, getting excited there might be some action at last. “Six-, eight-, or twelve-pounder howitzers? Little too far, even for them. I think they must be mortars.”

He'd experienced mortars; all those weeks under the drumfire of a French artillery train at Yorktown, aiding the Rebels. Twelve-or thirteen-inch they'd been, some as big as sixteen-inch. Massive shells they'd fired, solid shot, bursting shell, their fuses glowing in the night like fiery banshees—and carcases; flaming wads soaked in anything that'd burn . . . and keep on burning once they buried themselves in a house . . . or a ship.

“Les Républicains?”
Little Phoebe asked fearfully, pulling her sheet up higher about her.
“Mon dieu!”

“Well, they ain't the Royal Horse Artillery,” Scott sneered.

“Oui, mademoiselle, ils sont les Républicains,”
Lewrie told her. “Mister Scott, get the hands mustered. I'll dress and run up to headquarters to see what's what.”

“Ve 'ave brea'fas', Barnaby?” Phoebe asked.
“Le petit déjeuner?”

“Run along, squirrel, there's work to do,” Scott said.

That shelling had started on 18 September. Next day, more batteries had opened fire upon the tightly packed ships in the Little Road— batteries masked by the sheltering heights of La Petite Garenne and another middling hill a little sou'west of the first. Twenty-four-pounder siege guns joined in, too, firing direct, though at maximum elevation on their trunnions, from high ground near La Seyne, the civilian harbour.

This forced some of the shipping to move, out through the Gullet to new anchorages in the Great Road to the east, or closer in toward the jetties of the basin. A brace of gunboats, floating batteries, were got out of the yards, manned and sent to the nor'west arm of the Little Road near Fort Millaud and the Poudrière, the powder-magazine. And they were reinforced by a full crew of gunners on the
Aurore,
and the presence of Rear Admiral John Cell's flagship, the mighty ninety-eight-gunned, three-decker
St. George.

The French had the advantage, though, of being masked, their exact position unknown, and were able to fire with more or less scientific accuracy from stable, fixed positions, with observers to correct the fall-of-shot. Sooner or later, trigonometry, ballistics, and the right guesstimate on powder measure to be ignited, and the right length of fuse to be fitted, would score a hit, and that a devastating one.

The British gunners could only roughly guess where behind the masking hills the batteries were, firing from ships which, even at anchor, shifted and recoiled with each massive discharge. They had to probe with their shells, much like a blind man must feel for the kerb with his cane, hoping for the best.

French fire was so gallingly accurate, toward the afternoon of the 19th, that the gunboats had to slip their cables and retire. They returned to the duel on the morning of 20 September. And by midday, one of the floating batteries was hit and damaged, and the second was sunk outright.

This they watched from a post on the basin's western jetty, engaged in trundling powder and shot out to the thirty-two- and forty-two-pounders, just in case . . . Between trips, during a dinner break, or a rest stop with mugs of appallingly piss-poor French beer, Lewrie and his men had ringside seats, right up to the ropes, as it were, where they could best see the opponents toe up and square off.

“Hmm, I wonder . . .” Lieutenant Scott grimaced, turning to peer toward the west beyond Fort Malbousquet, then to the heights to the north.

“Wonder what, Mister Scott?”

“Your pet . . . did that Crillart fellow say how many men they have yonder, in Carteau's army?” Scott inquired.

“Two divisions . . . maybe six thousand or so, if they're up to the old establishments yet, I think I heard.”

“And we've barely five thousand so far, guarding . . .”

“Guarding bloody everything,” Lewrie snorted. “Lapoype from the east might be about the same size.” He sat uneasily, trying to at least appear calm for his men, on a massive granite block of the jetty's breastworks, swinging his heels over the waterside. “Least this bugger's not done much else but shell, so far. No infantry probes to speak of.”

“Maybe Carteau's leadin' us by the nose, waiting for all the men coming down from Lyons. Keep our attention fixed here, whilst . . .”

“Oh, there you are, Mister Lewrie, sir!” the teenaged midshipman cried, the same little pest they'd met their first day ashore. “Been searching all over Creation for you,” he panted. “Rear Admiral Goodall's finest compliments to you, Lieutenant Lewrie, and he begs me to direct you to his presence, as soon as is practicable, sir.”

“Something useful for us to do, at last?” Lewrie wondered aloud.

“One may not presume to, uhm . . . presume, sir, but . . .” The midshipman shrugged.

“Mister Scott, take charge of the hands. Keep 'em busy, whilst I toddle off,” Lewrie said, swinging his legs back over the bulwark.

“Aye, sir,” Scott replied. “And whatever business they wish of us, sir . . . ?”

“Aye, Mister Scott?”

“Well, damme, we're sailors . . . keep us out of those hills, could you, at least?” Scott implored.

“I'll do my best, sir,” Lewrie smiled.