Kings and Emperors (53 page)

“Traverse is
true
, sir!” Harvey screeched, sounding triumphant. “Our shot is
skimming
the hill, by
inches,
I think!”

“Quoins out half an inch!” Lewrie shouted. “Serve the whores another!”

“Ready? By broadside …
fire
!” Westcott roared.

“Yes! Yes, that's the way!” Midshipman Harvey yelled, far above the massive smoke clouds and able to see.

French shot was still striking close aboard, the ship boomed to hits crashing into her thick timbers and stout scantlings, and wood shrieked and squawked as the lighter upper bulwarks were ravaged. The fore course yard was hit, amputated just below the foremast fighting top, and both ends of the yard sagged downward in a steep
V
to drape furled canvas, and snap brace line, clews, and jeers. A Marine tumbled from the foremast fighting top with a thin scream, crashing to the deck in a pinwheel of arms and legs.

“
Spot … on,
sir!” Harvey reported, going hoarse.

“Pass word below,” Lewrie yelled, “our aim is spot on, and no adjustments are needed! Pour it on, Mister Westcott, pour it on!”

He lifted his telescope as the smoke thinned once more, peering hard to see the results of that last broadside. He saw raw divots in the slope just below the French guns, where roundshot had hit short and buried themselves, some lines ploughed a bit further upslope where other shot had ripped long troughs in the earth, as if God had drawn His fingers to rake at the French.

Damme, is that an over-turned gun yonder?
he wished to himself.

Two-thirds of a mile range was just too far to make out close details, even with his strong day-glass, but he could make out French gunners scurrying to fetch powder cartridges from the limbers, which were hidden behind the crest of the hill. Their cannon and their wheeled carriages were little black
H
-shapes, surrounded by gunners who wheeled them back into position, fed their maws with powder and fresh shot … all pointed directly at him; he was looking straight down their muzzles!

“By broadside … fire!”

“Dammit!” he spat as his view was blotted out, lowering his telescope in mounting frustration. He wanted to
see
!

Climb the shrouds, high as the cat-harpings?
he thought;
No, it wouldn't be high enough. I'd have t'join Harvey, and I've not been in the cross-trees in
ages
!

There were some good things about being a Post-Captain, or pretending to be one, after all!

“A gun dis-mounted, sir!” Harvey yelled down.

Lewrie whipped up his telescope again as the smoke cleared to a haze and did a quick count of the little
H
-shapes. Yes, there
was
one of them leaning to one side, with no one standing round it!

“Serve 'em another, Mister Westcott!” he roared.

Firing, running in, swabbing out, loading, then running out and shifting the aim with crow levers; he lost track of how long
Sapphire
kept up her fire; he lost count of how many times his ship was hit. After a time, though, reports of damage came less often, and Midshipman Harvey's shouts became more excited, raw and rasping as his throat gave out. Finally …

“Deck, there!” Harvey cried. “They are bringing up
limbers
!
Three
guns dis-mounted … they are
retiring
!”

Lewrie took a long, hard look, even though his eyes burned from all the irritants in gunpowder smoke, blinking away tears, swiping at his face with the cuffs of his coat sleeves.

Yes, by God!
he told himself;
They've had enough of us, they're pullin' out!

Horse teams, which had been sheltered near the caissons of shot and powder cartridges, could be seen near the surviving guns, being hitched up; carriage trails were being lifted to re-assemble guns to the limbers. One by one, the French battery was withdrawing to the shelter behind Santa Lucía Hill!

“Cease fire, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie bade in a croak through his dry and smoked throat. “Cease fire, and pass word below that we shot the living
shit
outa those bastards! Damn my eyes if we don't have the best gunners in the whole bloody
Fleet
, tell 'em!”

“Took the better part of two hours, but we did it, sir,” Westcott said, grinning fiercely, his white teeth startlingly bold against the grime of gun-smoke that had coated him from head to toe.

“It
did
?” Lewrie said in wonder. “I didn't keep track. Secure the guns, see that the hands have a turn at the scuttle-butts, then let's take in the bower, make sail, and fall down on the kedge.”

“Aye, sir, I'll see to it,” Lt. Westcott promised.

“Mister Yelland, still with us?” Lewrie asked, turning round to survey the quarterdeck.

“Here, sir,” the Sailing Master said. “My congratulations to you, sir.”

“Mine to you, sir,” Lewrie replied, shrugging off the compliment with a weary modesty. “I wonder, sir … might you have a flask on you?”

“Just rum, sir,” Mr. Yelland said, sounding apologetic.

“I think we've earned ourselves a ‘Nor'wester' nip, don't you, Mister Yelland?” Lewrie asked.

“Why, I do believe we have, sir!” Yelland cried, breaking out into a wide smile as he handed over his pint bottle.

*   *   *

“There is a hoist from Admiral Hood's flagship, sir!” one of
Undaunted
's Midshipmen announced to the officers on her quarterdeck. “It is …
Sapphire
's number, and … Well Done, no … spelled out … Bravely Done!”

“And so it was,” Captain Chalmers said with a vigourous nod of his head, “though I do wish that Captain Lewrie had summoned us to aid him.”

HMS
Sapphire
was standing out from her close approach to the shore, gnawed and evidently damaged, but putting herself to rights even as she made a bit more sail. Captain Chalmers could hear the embarked soldiers and transport ship sailors raising cheers as the old 50-gunner Fourth Rate passed through their anchorages. Ship's bells were chimed in salute, clanging away tinnily like the parish church bells of London. Chalmers's own crew was gathered at the rails waiting for their chance to cheer, her, too. He looked round cutty-eyed to seek out Midshipman Lewrie, and found him up by the foremast shrouds, safely out of earshot.

“Pity that the ‘Ram-Cat' is such a rake-hell of the old school,” Chalmers imparted to his First Officer in a close mutter. “He don't even have a Chaplain aboard! From what I've heard of him, it's doubtful if one could even call him a Christian gentleman. A scandalous fellow, but a bold one. Runs in the family, I've heard.”

“Surely not in his son, sir,” the First Officer said.

“Perhaps we've set him a finer example, and altered the course of his life,” Chalmers said, congratulating himself for being one of the principled, respectable, and high-minded sort.

Then, as HMS
Sapphire
began to come level with
Undaunted,
about one cable off, Captain Chalmers doffed his hat, waved it widely, and began to shout “Huzzah!”, calling for his crew to give her Three Cheers And A Tiger!

Scandalous reprobates still had their uses.

 

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Night on the open sea, as dark as a boot, with the Westerlies keening in the rigging, and HMS
Sapphire
plunging and hobby-horsing under reduced and reefed sail. The clouds overhead were thick, and there was no moon. Captain Alan Lewrie was on deck, bundled up in his boat cloak, with a wool muffler round his neck, and his oldest hat on his head, peering into the darkness to count the many glowing taffrail lanthorns of the transports ahead of his ship to make sure that none of them were veering off, or lagging. There were even more astern, a second convoy low on the Southern horizon, with its own escorts over-seeing its safety. And, far out on the Northern horizon, beyond his own group, hull down and barely guessed at, there were even more, their night-lights winking as the sea surged ships atop the long rollers, then dropped the trailing ships into the deep troughs. All bound for some port in England.

He paced about, from the windward side which was his, alone, by right, to the helmsmen at the massive double-wheel, then down to leeward for a bit, where the officer of the watch, Lt. Elmes, stood.

Looking forward along the length of his ship, he could see a wee glow from the lanthorn at the forecastle belfry, and the ruddy square glows of the hatchways that led down to the upper gun-deck.

England, my God,
he wearily thought. He had no idea if Percy Stangbourne had survived the last French assaults, and wondered what would happen when he mailed that promised packet of letters for him. Most of the army was off and away, large clutches of ships sailing as they were filled and sorted into convoy groups. There were still ships waiting at Corunna for the rear-guard, for the men who spiked the guns and despoiled what was left in the depot that could not be carried away. He had no idea what
their
fate might be.

At least the people are in good takings,
he noted as the sound of music came wafting up from below through those hatchways. “Spanish Ladies,” “The Jolly Thresher,” “One Misty, Moisty Morning” were being sung in hearty bellows. The crew was happy; they would be in England soon.

He frowned, feeling very glum, as he speculated if he would be going back to Spain, to Gibraltar, or Lisbon anytime soon. Would Thomas Mountjoy still have need of him and his ship, or would he and
Sapphire
be sent halfway round the world to do something else? And, there was Maddalena to gloom about. If there was no return to Gibraltar, they would never see each other, again, and he would have to send her a very sad letter and a note of hand with which to support her 'til she managed to find someone else who would see to her up-keep.

“Damn, damn, damn,” he growled.

To make things worse, the musicians below struck up a new tune, and a strong tenor voice, he thought it might be Michael Deavers from his boat crew, began to sing “Over the Hills and Far Away.”

He only could recall the few lines that Captain Chalmers had sung, even though he had tried to play the tune on his penny-whistle that afternoon.

“‘And
I
would love you all the day …
all
the night we would kiss and play,
if
to me you would fondly
say,
over the hills and far
a-way
,'” he mouthed along under his breath, humming the tune at the rest. “Oh, damn, but I'm sorry, girl,” he whispered. “
Minha doce … meu amor.
”

Over the hills and far away.

 

AFTERWORD

Napoleon Bonaparte, self-crowned Emperor of The French, must've been very bored when he decided to overthrow the Spanish Bourbon king and conquer the Iberian Peninsula. Oh, there was still England to be invaded (he hadn't completely given up on the scheme) but he'd beaten everybody else in Europe, had Russia cowed and allied (sort of) with his Empire, and ruled the roost from the Atlantic to the Germanies, Poland (still beholden to Russia, anyway), and most of Italy.

There was Portugal, long a friend of England, that must have her ports closed and all her trade with Great Britain shut down, to complete the implentation of his Berlin Decrees and establish his Continental System to destroy British–European trade and bankrupt his last enemy. Fine and dandy, but, why Spain?

After all, Minister Manuel Godoy had cozened his country into an alliance with France in late 1804, had handed over good warships, money, food, and access to Spain's overseas colonial ports, not that the French were in a position to take advantage of that after losing control of the seas after the Battle of Trafalgar. Spain was supine, a lick-spittle ally, and as said in
A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
 … “mostly harmless.” Napoleon was allowed to march an army through Spain into Portugal and conquer, but occupied cities in the North and centre of Spain. Did he
really
imagine that by conquering Spain he also gained every Spanish colony in the
world,
including the Phillipines in the Pacific? Or, was Spain merely a stepping-stone to
grander
ambitions, like seizing both Gibraltar and Ceuta, then crossing into North Africa, marching East to Egypt (again!) and even to British-held India? You have to give it to him; the little bastard dreamed big!

There was no real point to it, but, perhaps Napoleon thought it would be a walk-over. He did not take into account the Spanish people, nor did he take into account, or thought very little of, the British, who thought it possible to confront Napoleon on land, at last.

Everywhere that French armies went, once they had conquered a new province or country, they usually found quick-thinking collaborators who'd go along with them, and populations so weary of all those Thirty Years' Wars and Hundred Years' Wars that had plundered their lands and wealth that they would meekly succumb and try to make the best of things. Garrison duty was usually dull for the French, and they could quickly enlist, or conscript, young men into “allied” militaries who could police their own countries, and march to flesh out the already-massive French armies.

Nobody, anywhere in Europe, had ever cut a French throat in their sleep before, rebelled against them, ambushed their couriers and supply convoys, and armed themselves. General Castaños's victory against French General Dupont at Bailén must have been an embarrassing shock to Napoleon's pride in his armies. Unfortunately that victory made the Spanish think that they were invincible, which led many of their other Generals to lead Spanish armies to utter catastrophes, later on. The introduction of self-organised, self-armed bands of
guerrillas, partidas
who fought the “Little War” as they called it, was another shock; why, it was against the very rules of war, as they were understood in Europe, as chaotic as war on the frontiers against savage Red Indians! (Politically Correct types may blow it out yer arse.) Except from people like the bum-licking Godoy and the elite classes of Spain, the Anfrancesados, Napoleon and his men could not find very many collaborators, or recruits to serve alongside their own soldiers, either; the guerillas saw to that, making it very bloodily clear that co-operation or collusion with the invaders could be fatal. There were very few Quislings in Spain!