The King's Marauder (50 page)

“A splendid victory, if I may say so, Captain Lewrie,” Pomfret congratulated. “Not that I know much of naval battles. Even taking a spectator’s part in one still leaves me full of questions.”

“Splendid?” Lewrie responded, shrugging. “I’ll have t’take your word for that, Captain Pomfret.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Lewrie had ordered his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair fetched up to the poop deck, and had taken himself a long, restoring nap, oblivious for the better part of an hour to the thuds, bangs, and screechings of saws as
Sapphire
’s damage was seen to sufficient for a safe return to Gibraltar. He was wakened by a wet nose, then a wet tongue, and some wee, tentative “wakey-wakey” woofs from Bisquit, who had gotten over his terror of loud gunfire and was seeking comfort and attention to acknowledge him, and give him pets.

He cossetted the dog for a few minutes, then got to his feet, a bit stiff and sore, but well-rested, had several dips of water from the nearest scuttle-butt, and returned to duty.

“Mister Snelling and the Spanish Surgeon and their Mates have had their hands full, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported, shuffling through a sheaf of notes he’d made. “There were nigh three hundred men in
San Pedro
’s crew, and we’ve found nearly ninety of them dead, with over an hundred men wounded.” That drew an amazed whistle from Lewrie. “Her captain and two of her other officers are among the slain. Half her larboard guns are dis-mounted, carriages shattered, and one burst. That explains the flash and smoke we saw, sir. We’ve rigged a spare spanker to the stump of her mizen, and cut away and jettisoned everything that got shot off … they had plenty of spare spars, so we can get tops’ls up, and we can replace her fore course and main course. All in all, she can be got under way by dusk. Her jib boom’s dicey-looking, but it’ll take a foresail or two, for balance on the helm, which we’ve re-roved, so she’ll steer … after a fashion.”

“Want her, Geoffrey?” Lewrie asked. “If only for a time?”

“They don’t award Fifth Rates to Lieutenants, or Commanders,” Westcott laughed off. “Better you assign Harcourt the chore, again. If the Gibraltar dockyards can set her right, and she’s off for home, let him take the chance of re-assignment.”

“But, if Admiralty makes
him
a Commander, not you … sooner or later, you
must
be promoted,” Lewrie protested. “You’ve more than earned it.”

“Still trying to get rid of me?” Westcott scoffed. “That hurts!”

“You’d rather stay and be amused by my foolishness?” Lewrie asked with a brow up.

“Oh, something like that,” Westcott replied, with a grin and a shrug. “By the by, the other frigate is the
San Pablo,
and they
were
sister ships, and have always worked together since they were put in commission two years ago, sir. Saints Peter and Paul? She’s still in sight, off to the Nor’east, about six or seven miles away, barely making steerage way.”

“Hmm, let’s go after her, and make it a clean sweep,” Lewrie decided of a sudden. “God knows we could use the prize money, whenever
that
comes due. Our prisoners aboard the
San Pedro
are well in hand?”

“All Spanish arms, even personal knives, are secured, and the spirits stores are well-guarded,” Westcott told him. “Those still on their feet we’ve herded round the mainmast, now the heavy work’s done, so I should assume so. We’ve three files of Marines aboard her, to boot, under Lieutenant Roe.”

“We’ll gamble, then, and go after the other,” Lewrie ordered. “Get us under way to the Nor’east, Mister Westcott.”

“Aye aye, sir!” was the eager, hungry reply.

*   *   *

HMS
Sapphire
had hardly begun to sail after the
San Pablo
when urgent cries came from the lookouts aloft. “Th’ Chase is rollin’ on her beam ends! Deck, there! Th’ Chase looks t’be sinkin’!”

“Clap on sail, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped.

Lewrie went up to the poop deck and raised his telescope. It was a much better vantage point than his old practice of scaling the mainmast shrouds almost to the cat-harpings, and even suited his lazy nature!

“Damme, she’s goin’!” he muttered.

The frigate’s masts were canted far over to larboard, and she looked very low in the water, with the sea breaking mildly just under her line of gun-ports though he could see the coppering tacked to her stern, as if she was also down by the head with her stern cocked up. Looking closer, he could make out weak streams of water gushing from her, as if her sailors were flailing away madly at her pumps, but it seemed a losing fight.

“Cast of the log!” he demanded.

“Seven and a half knots, sir!” Midshipman Griffin shouted back after a long minute to let the log-line run and be pinched after the sand ran out of a minute glass.

We’ll be too late,
Lewrie thought;
Those poor buggers.

Time out of mind, since Tudor days, England and Spain had detested each other, and it was natural to loathe the Dons. When engaged at war with them, in the heat of battle at close broadsides or teeth-to-teeth with crossed blades, killing them any way possible without a thought and exulting in their slaughter bothered good Englishmen no more than piling up dead rabbits, or a terrier’s kills in a rat pit.

Helpless sailors of any nation, though … men who risked the sea and its perils, and who were suffering a fate that could befall any British sailor, if his luck ran out, that was another matter.

It would take
Sapphire
the better part of an hour to reach the stricken frigate, and she would slip beneath the waves long before, no matter what frantic efforts the Spanish could do to prolong the inevitable.

Six miles off, and Lewrie could see what was left of her upperworks falling free over her larboard side as her sailors chopped, cut, and axed away everything standing above her fighting tops to ease the weight that was dragging her over. For a short, hopeful moment, she did come a bit more upright, but those shot holes that had been blown into her a little below the waterline continued to flood her innards.

Four miles off, and quarterdeck and forecastle guns were cast overside, but that made little difference. The
San Pablo
had borne her ship’s boats on the boat-tier beams that spanned the waist, and they had been turned to scrap wood, but they were freed and shoved by human force to the larboard side, where great sections of the bulwarks that remained were hacked down, and the boats put over, though not a one of them floated.

Three miles off, and Lewrie could see the tangle of ropes that bound spare sails that had been fothered over the shot holes, and the fothering patches seeming to
breathe
as air compressed in her orlop and bilges pressed out, and the sea dimpled them inward.

Two miles off, and the
San Pablo
’s bows were submerged up to the forecastle, and she suddenly roiled onto her larboard side and began to go down in a foaming welter of great air bubbles and flying spray shot out of her hull.

“Damme, damme, damme!” Lewrie muttered, closing the tubes of his telescope, thinking that he could hear the mortal groaning noises of a proud ship beginning to drown, and the faint screams and prayers for salvation from her crew!

Her masts slid under, ’til only the mizen stood above the sea, and a hint of her taffrails and her captain’s cabin windows, the red-gold-red flag of Spain still flying, and then even that was gone in a boiling froth of foam as she gave up her last exhale and headed for the bottom.

“Fetch-to, close as you can, Mister Westcott, and man all the boats,” Lewrie ordered, chiding himself for not going after her sooner. Even with aid so close, the long minutes required to bring up to the winds and bring the boats up from astern, then man them and get them off, was too long for many of the Spanish sailors. Some survivors clung to broken yards or the shattered ship’s boats, some hung on to floating hatch gratings, and some of the frigate’s walking wounded lay atop them. But Lewrie could see many bodies floating face-down and drowned, and what had become of her badly wounded who could not be moved from her belowdecks surgery did not bear thinking about. Many men who’d managed to escape her had gotten entangled in the confused masses of standing and running rigging and had drowned, unable to claw their way to the surface, and … it appeared that it was not only the majority of British sailors that could not swim, but it was the same case with the Spanish. Spanish sailors were thrashing in panic, flailing the water and slipping under even as he watched!

All he could do was pace the poop deck, head down so he didn’t have to watch any longer, with his hands clasped in the small of his back, trying to shut out the terrified shouts, screams, and prayers and play stern and stoic, and wait for the final report.

“Ah, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said at last as his First Officer came to the poop deck after the last boat had been recovered. “What’s the count?”

“We only managed to save fifty-nine of them, sir,” Westcott said, lifting his hat in formal salute. “None of her officers or her Mids. Her captain … he was determined to go down with his ship, and those in command who’d survived the fight swore they’d do the same. Damned if they didn’t gather in his cabins for a last drink before she went. I’ve never
heard
the like!”

“Perhaps the Spanish treasury is so empty, he thought it likely they’d ask him t’pay t’replace her,” Lewrie said with a brief snort of the blackest of gallows humour. “Poor devils. Rig out boats for towing, and get us under way to rejoin our prize, Mister Westcott.”

“Aye, sir,” Westcott said, looking grim and disappointed with his best efforts to save more. “Shape course for Gibraltar?”

“Aye, Gibraltar,” Lewrie said, nodding gravely. He lingered on the poop deck for several minutes to savour the airs. It was getting on for November, and even the Mediterranean was turning brisk. The sun was lowering in the West, getting on towards dusk, and the skies in that direction were almost glowing amber, yellow, and red.

Red skies at night, sailor’s delight,
he glumly thought, though far from delighted by then. At last, he descended to the quarterdeck, hoping that his cabins, which he had not seen since the ship had gone to Quarters that morning, might have been put back in some semblance of decent order, though he dreaded the idea that he would have to dine in his officers who remained aboard, along with Captain Pomfret and a few Mids; they’d be cock-a-whoop boisterous, too ready to celebrate, and he would have much preferred to dine alone, just him and Chalky.

“Too bad about the other Spanish frigate, ain’t it, sir?” Captain Pomfret commented. “All those poor, drowned men! Still, defeating two enemy ships in one day is quite a rare feat, I should think. Make all the papers and cheer folks back home something wondrous! My congratulations, Captain Lewrie … even if, as I understand the process of ‘to the victor go the spoils’, your ship will only reap prize money on the one, what?”

“You shall share in it, too, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie assured him with a faint grin. “You were present upon our decks. Take joy o’ that. Dine with me tonight. With any luck, my cook, Yeovill, will prepare us something special.”

“Delighted to hear that I should prosper, even in a small way, and I would also be delighted to dine, and celebrate your victory,” Pomfret eagerly said.

“Yes, it was a victory, wasn’t it?” Lewrie mused, wanting no more than to go aft and get off his feet. “Not completely mine, though. If a grand victory it was, it’s
Sapphire
’s victory,
their
victory,” he said, pointing forward to the many sailors on deck. “It’s
always
theirs.”

EPILOGUE

I begin by taking. I shall find scholars afterwards to demonstrate my perfect right.

F
REDERICK
II, T
HE
G
REAT

K
ING OF
P
RUSSIA
(1712–1786)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Bart., was having one of the worst mornings of his life. To say that he felt rowed beyond all temperance, to describe his mood of being betrayed, and as ill-used as if assailed by so many bears, would be an understatement.

He could not return aboard HMS
Sapphire
and indulge in a roaring, satisfying rage in the privacy of his great-cabins; that would result in a terrorised cat, a howling ship’s dog, and cringing cabin-servants, and possibly the abuse of his furniture, and stubbed toes. Quite possibly his officers, Mids, and sailors who could not help over-hearing a long, curse-laden tirade, and the gay tinkle of flung glassware, might imagine that he’d taken complete leave of his senses.

Lewrie
could
relate the wrenching circumstances to Lieutenant Geoffrey Westcott later, after he had drained off all his bile, but it was not yet time for that; he had to
see
straight, first, and, at the moment, he felt that if he looked in a mirror, his eyes would be red, like a Viking Berserker warrior of old!

I
may
laugh about this in future
 …
but I rather doubt it,
he fumed to himself.

Naturally, he would not go to his mistress’s, Maddalena Covilh
ā
’s lodgings and burden
her
with it. She’d think him demented, and fear that she’d made a bad bargain with a raving lunatick, one she’d never know when he might go off, again, perhaps on her. Maddalena
seemed
intelligent enough a woman to understand, but it might be more than an hour, and three bottles of wine, before he completely vented.

No, the only person upon whom he could empty his spleen was Mr. Thomas Mountjoy, for part of his bad news affected that worthy’s operations, and if he hadn’t heard about it yet, Mountjoy would surely be as shocked as he was, and just as angry.

“Deacon,” Lewrie growled at the dangerous fellow as he entered Mountjoy’s lodgings, not caring how he took the curtness. “Is he in?”