Dewey Lambdin - Sea of Grey

"You wish to harden up and stand out from the shore?" Lewrie asked, the glass still to his eye.

"I would, sir. The best we have are century-old Spanish charts."

"Mister Langlie, a point to windward," Lewrie called. "And put some spare hands in the larboard fore-chains to sound with the lead."

"Aye, sir."

"As you bear… on the up-roll… fire!"

Under a mile now, Lt. Wyman was letting gun-captains aim for themselves, picking their own targets. Proteus shuddered and jerked, anew, as the 12-pounders exploded in a stutter that ran from her bow to her stern. Wyman paced the waist of the ship between the starboard and the idle larboard batteries, between the foremast and main, urging gun-captains and more experienced senior quarter-gunners for a steady pace to keep the guns firing two rounds every three minutes.

"Hit!" Lt. Devereux the Marine officer cried from among his men on the starboard gangway above the guns. "Well shot, you lads! You've hammered one of the luggers, and shot a mast clean away!"

The gun crews cheered, even as they tugged and hauled, even as ship's boys scampered along the deck with their leather cases holding sewn powder cartridges from the risk of premature explosion, even as barrels were swabbed out by the rammer men, as Number Twos held leather thumb-stalls over the touch-holes to prevent backblast from the lingering shards of cartridge bags and smouldering powder embers.

Cartridges were rammed down, roundshot was thumped firm against the charges, as vent-pricks were inserted into the touch-holes, piercing the bags to spill powder, so the jets of fire from the flintlock strikers and the priming powder in their pans could ignite the charges in the blink of an eye when the trigger lanyards were jerked.

Up the deck to the ports the guns were rolled one more time, as Proteus swung her bows seaward one point, not only to flee the risk of hidden rocks and shoals, but to close the range on the small craft and cut them off from running any longer to the Sou'west. With the wind more on the starboard beam, it was harder to run the guns out, but the fire-blackened muzzles jutted through the ports and began to wave and elevate in small jerks, 'til the gun-captains were satisfied.

"As you bear… on the up-roll… fire!"

The damaged lugger was struck again, a heavy ball smashing into her larboard side and spilling people into the sea. A one-masted sloop in the lead of their gaggle was hit near her sternquarters and jerked to the impact, rolling half on her starboard beam-ends before rocking slowly upright, but beginning to settle as she started to fill, stern down but still sailing, like a wounded goose.

"Too good to last, sir… the other two are breaking free from their partners," Lt. Langlie pointed out, his arm outstretched to the right and a bit aft. "Ducking astern of us."

Lewrie took a long look at the damaged sloop, and found it low in the water, aft, its transom almost level with the sea. It wouldn't last long, in his estimation; nor would the crippled lugger whose lone surviving foremast could not drag her to freedom fast enough.

"Two points more a'weather, Mister Langlie, and engage the two off the starboard quarters," Lewrie decided. "Those two'll be there, when we've dealt with these. Damme! Right plucky of 'em, to tack and cross our stern! They'll be within carronade shot in a minute. We'll open with the stern chasers and carronades! Ready, the after-guard!"

"Perhaps there's more fight in the Frogs than we thought, sir," Lt. Langlie commented.

Lewrie raised his telescope once more and eyed the boats that were aiming to beat Sou'easterly and run aground where they might on the Spanish shore of Santo Domingo… before Proteus could kill them.

"Whatever they are, Mister Langlie, they ain't French," Lewrie said, after he had gotten a closer look at their foe. "They're Black! Ev'ry man jack of 'em, from what I can see."

The surviving sloop and lugger were within four cables as they completed crossing the wind's eye and began to gather speed for their run to safety, and Lewrie could pick out details. The men aboard them were armed, and wore a semblance of uniforms; cocked hats, military or civilian, but all decorated with the red-white-blue cockade of revolutionary French Jacobins… white breeches and colourful sashes, into which pistols, swords, or cutlasses were jammed. Some wore shirts and dark blue French uniform coats, or coats with no shirts; some had to make do in waistcoats and no shirts, but with crossbelts and brass breastplates in the middle of their chests. There were a few in full uniforms and plumed hats, wearing officer's swords, and dragoon boots, or breeches without stockings or any footwear. But all bore muskets with their bayonets already affixed.

Closer still, and Lewrie could see kegs of what could only be taken for gunpowder, kegs at which some rebel slave soldiers chopped with hand axes and tomahawks, while others worked at flints and lint to kindle sparks and flames, whilst others held oiled-rag torches to be…!

"Damn my eyes, Mister Langlie, I do believe those bastards mean to blow themselves to Kingdom Come, and us with 'em!" he shouted as the two small craft fell off the wind even more and, gathering speed, began to turn toward Proteus's stern quarters… attacking the frigate!

"Marines to the quarterdeck, Mister Devereux! Man the swivels and the carronades, smartly now!" Lewrie urged, feeling a bit of panic. "Mister Winwood, a bit more speed t'get clear of 'em. Mister Wyman? A broadside would do right nicely, 'bout now!"

"Coming, sir, directly!"

"So's bloody Christmas!" Lewrie muttered under his breath, too fearful of the suicidal slaveys to care about "captainly" behaviour.

"Dem fools got de 'nutmegs,' sah," Cox'n Andrews breathed in awe as he appeared unbidden but welcome at Lewrie's side, with a brace of pistols and Lewrie's trusty Ferguson rifle and its accoutrements. "Dey Law', dey's laughin'!"

About two cables' distance now, the small boats surging up to carronade range, and Lewrie could hear a chant that nigh-shriveled his "stones" above the rumble of gun-trucks and the drum of running feet.

"Eh Eh! Heu! Canga, bajнo tй!

Canga, moune de le! Canga, do ki la!

Canga, li!"

"What the Devil's all that?" Lewrie demanded to know.

"Don' know, sah… Obeah stuff, maybe," Andrews replied, crossing himself for luck and blanching a touch pale. "Some sorta witchie workin'. Voodoo… voudoun. Deir Creole tongue."

"On the up-roll… fire!" Wyman screeched, at long last.

Not a full second after the guns erupted, before the spent gunpowder could even begin to wing alee, there came a huge tongue of yellow flame off the starboard side amid a titanic gust of wind that flung a pea-soup fog of reeking, blue-white smoke at them, stinging hot, and shot through with splinters, chunks, and burning embers! In that stentorian blasting roar, shrieks and screams could be heard. Things went wetly Plop! against the deck where they stood!

"Aah… that's part of a hand," Lt. Langlie said in a shuddery voice as he recognised the object.

"Get it overside, and let's sink the other one," Lewrie snapped, nauseated by the sight. The smoke of the broadside, and the blast, was clearing very slowly, and the second one still lived… somewhere out there.

"There, sir!" Marine Lt. Devereux shouted, pointing at a vague outline. It was the one-masted sloop, rounding up within a cable off Proteus's starboard quarter… chasing her!

"Six pounders and swivels, aim aft!" Lewrie shouted, gathering up his rifle. "Marines, put 'em down!"

"Eh! Eh! Heu! Heu! Canga, bafio tй!"

"Marines, cock your locks! Level… by volley… fire!"

"Canga, moune de le! Canga, do ki la!"

Lewrie took aim, the action at full cock, and squeezed the trigger of his Ferguson. The butt slammed back into his shoulder with an emphatic reassuring thump. His target, an "officer" in a blue coat over ebony skin and ragged field workers' trousers, clapped both hands to his face as the bullet took him in the left cheek, knocking his ornate cocked hat off as he left his feet and flew backwards into the tillerman and some sheet-tenders. The stutter of a volley of Brown Bess muskets followed a second later, and half a dozen Blacks were cut down, their cheering and shouting stopped. Swivel guns mounted in the metal forks atop the taff-rail and after starboard bulwarks barked and yapped, spewing handfuls of grape-shot or.75 caliber musket balls in a deadly hail that chopped down even more. Then the 6-pounders, loaded with roundshot and stands of grape-shot, began to fire, slamming so hard that chunks of hull and bodies were flung skyward, almost burying the sloop's bow in its own wave as it was bludgeoned to a stop.

"Canga, li!"

A torch was lowered to an open powder keg, the bearer bleeding from a dozen wounds, but still chanting and screaming at them. Before more musketry could bring him down, he smiled and shoved the fire into the keg- "Canga, li!" his dying comrades gleefully urged him!

"Duck!" Lewrie shouted, along with twenty others.

Not one hundred yards astern in Proteus % wake, the sloop went up in a boil of flame-shot smoke, smashing in every transom window and taff-rail lanthorn glass pane. A huge, feathery pillar of water arose, bearing up planks and oars, bits of mast, seared ropes, and gobbets of flesh… to patter down amid a foetid shower of seawater!

The people on the quarterdeck got back to their feet, mumbling and working their jaws, tugging at their ears from the assault on eardrums and sinuses. A few even bled from their ears and noses.

Astern, there were now two roiled circles of white spume, with only a few identifiable bits of wreckage to be seen

"Don't s'pose there's much point in looking for survivors, is there, sir," Lieutenant Langlie said; it wasn't a question. He looked stunned.

"No… I doubt there is, Mister Langlie," Lewrie replied, his own ears ringing like Bow Bells. With an outward calm he did not feel, he cranked the breech of the Ferguson open, bit off a cartridge, then shoved it ball-first into the breech and cranked it shut. He primed the pan and closed the frizzen. "Now, let's come about and see to the other two boats, sir. Place us up to windward of them, and we'll use the larboard battery. No closer than two cables to 'em."

"Quite, sir," Langlie enthusiastically agreed.

"Carpenter to sound the well, and inspect the transom from the bilges up. Water carries the power of explosives better than air, I'm told," Lewrie prosed on, slinging the rifle, and turning to Andrews to take his double-barreled pistols to load and prime them, too. "We may have a plank stove in below the waterline from… that."

"Aye aye, sir."

"Anyone hurt?" Lewrie called out. "Yer bowels still work?"

His still shaken crew began to chuckle; even if more than a few were shifting their slop-trousers and clawing at their fundaments, as if their bowels had worked just hellish-fine, thankee.

"Ah, still living, Mister Winwood?" Lewrie chirped.

"Aye, sir. Never seen the like, sir," Winwood marvelled, about as much as Winwood could sound surprised by anything. "Why, they must be mad as a hatter to immolate themselves like that! Drunk as swine!"

"Anything t'kill oppressors, more-like, Mister Winwood," Lewrie speculated, still working his jaw, popping his mouth open like a fish to fully restore his hearing. "They tried t'sink us. Or die tryin'."

"They came out here deliberately then, do you think, sir?"

"Runnin' arms and powder along the coast," Lewrie said, shrugging in perplexity. "The roads must be horrid, with all those mountain ranges ashore, as bad as Italy. We were told that this L'Ouverture was out to invade Spanish Santo Domingo. We might have put a spoke in his wheel for a few weeks by intercepting these… madmen. Perhaps the other two boats'll tell us more. Do we take a prisoner or two?"

Wouldn't put it past 'em, Lewrie imagined, though; sent 'em out to sink a blockading ship? Lured us in? Was it deliberate? Jesus!

Proteus wore off the wind again to due West, well clear of her previous encounter, reduced sail, and ghosted down on the two crippled boats. In the short space of time since they had maimed them, one of them, the smaller sloop, had sunk, and only her bow bobbed upright in the sea, with a few wailing survivors clinging to it. The lugger was low in the water, and people were bailing with hats, pails, and their hands, others trying to rig a jury-mast from a pair of oars atop her planked-over forepeak, attempting to spread the leach and foot of her after lugsail to the wind by extending the oars out like cat's whiskers, with the tack of the sail shinnied up the foremast. As the frigate neared the lugger, wailing could be heard, and her crew, augmented by survivors from the sunken sloop, took up arms and stood trembling but game, some levelling their muskets at an impossible range.

"Pass the word for Surgeon's Mate Mister Durant," Lewrie said. "He speaks good French. Those slaves once got their work orders in it."

The larboard 12-pounders were run out and ready, the carronades and 6-pounders manned, as were the swivels. Devereux's Marines stood along the larboard gangway with their muskets, and a boarding party in Wyman's charge had cutlasses slung in baldrics over their shoulders, more muskets and pistols in their hands, and boarding pikes ready to deter any more suicidal charges.

"A point more alee, Mister Langlie," Lewrie ordered. And their frigate veered even closer to the lugger.

"Less than a cable, sir," Winwood warned.

"Mister Sevier… a shot from the bow-chaser! No shot across the bows… hull her if you can!"

The 6-pounder on the forecastle yapped, and its ball hit short but in line with the lugger, to carom off the sea and bound across her deck at head-height, scattering the close-packed Blacks, and killing a couple of the taller or slower ones.

"Ah, Mister Durant," Lewrie said, turning to the Surgeon's Mate. "Since my French is so execrable, perhaps you might try to make them see reason, and surrender. No one'll be harmed, tell 'em. I'll even let them go, once we've inspected their boat, and had a chance to interrogate them. They don't stand a mouse's chance, else. I'll set 'em ashore, unarmed, and I'll sink the boat, but they'll live. We're not grands blancs … we're British."

"I will try, Capitaine," Durant vowed, stepping to the bulkwark. "Bonjour, mes amis!" he began, and slanged a long palaver in Frog.

"Reddition?" came a defiant shout at the end of that. "Jamais!"