Are they daft?" Lieutenant Langlie, the First Officer, commented as he lowered his telescope, after watching the nearest brace of Dutch sloops open fire on Venerable and Triumph.
"Perhaps more desperate than daft, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said as he stepped back towards the wheel and compass binnacle. "If they've waited so long for the winds to shift, so they can come out, maybe cooperate in some French intrigue based in the Channel ports… well, this fat Dutch mynheer de Wynter can't run back into harbour without being seen doing something!"
They watched as HMS Triumph yawed to show more of her starboard beam, opening the limited arcs of her guns, as she intersected the enemy's line. With a titanic roar, she opened with a full broadside, the first and the most carefully aimed and laid in any battle, at the next Dutch ship astern of the one already pummeled by Venerable. That was a deathblow of 32-pounder and upper gundeck 18-pounder iron shot that tore giant gouges and eruptions of side-timbers, that harvested upper yards and masts in an eyeblink! They could hear horrid thuds or howls of rivened wood, as scantlings and beams shattered.
"Do we sail on like this, we'll mask her guns," Lewrie decided aloud, to his quarterdeck officers. "Let's bear up to windward, three points or so, Mister Langlie, and pass upwind of her."
"Aye, sir."
"Deck, there!" a lookout, high aloft on the mainmast, shouted down to them. "Two Dutch brigs alee… four points off t'starboard bows!"
That gap was filling with a rolling wall of spent powder smoke, but even from the deck they could espy the spectral shapes of two light Dutch warships, hesitantly hovering under reduced sail, and firing at Venerable. Venerable, already busy with her larboard guns, replied to that harassing long-range fire with a starboard broadside. The Dutch brig was swatted away, much like a pesky midge; great chunks of timber were blown from her sides and bulwarks, while a sudden hurricane erupted 'round her hull and waterline, like massive breakers crashing on a rocky shoreline.
"And just how does one say 'oops' in Dutch?" Lewrie chortled in glee, as his crew cheered the sight of an enemy half-smashed to matchwood in a twinkling!
Venerable then swung back to larboard, abandoning the equally hurt Staten-Generaal to turn her left-hand artillery against the starboard side of the prominently flag-bedecked Dutch admiral's ship.
"Deck, there!" a lookout stationed atop the mizzenmast called. " 'Ware astern an' larboard! Our liners!"
Lewrie turned and frowned, for there were Bedford and Director, not a quarter-mile off, with about a cable's worth between them as they surged forward to the battle line. In the middle distance beyond was their consort Lancaster. They weren't steering directly for that gap, but seemed to want to sidle Eastward along the Dutch line, to the windward side of Ardent, Venerable, and Triumph.
"Avast, Mister Langlie," Lewrie said with a scowl. "Hold this course, instead. We're blocked." He peered aloft; yes, they still had Engage To Leeward and Close Action signals flying. So why the Devil ain't they doin' it? he groused to himself.
Did Proteus stand on much longer, though, she'd run afoul of Venerable's group. As well, she couldn't stand sharp to windward, for fear of masking the Bedford group's guns, if not come nigh to a collision with one of them!
The wind? He shifted his gaze to the commissioning pendant at the mainmast truck. As in all sea-fights where heavy guns barked and boomed, the wind was getting flattened. The long pendant was curling and flagging limply. Not enough wind to work ahead of Bedford 's trio, nor was there enough wind to tack and pass astern of them, either. It would force them to fetch Proteus to, cocked up motionless to the wind, with her fragile stern bared to the foe, who had already proven to be eager to violate the old customs against firing at escorting frigates.
"Nothing for it but to haul our wind, Mister Langlie," Lewrie announced, with a sour note to his voice. "Let us wear ship over to starboard tack, swing 'round in a circle, then harden up and beat past our ships, to windward of 'em… where we should have been."
"Hmmm…" his darkly handsome First Lieutenant mused, unconsciously scratching at the side of his curly locks. "To leeward of our ships and their line for a bit, sir? Int'restin', if I may say so."
Naturally Lt. Langlie could not say "Are you barking mad?" or show any hint of disagreement with a captain; that was insubordination. It could also be taken for an inkling of fear and cowardice!
"We run into anything we can't handle, we duck right back out," Lewrie assured him. "P'raps even snuggle up to one of our liners and ask her t'shoo the big, bad bullies away. Aye, haul our wind, Mister Langlie. Five points alee, and prepare to wear ship."
"Aye aye, sir!" Langlie echoed, lifting his brass speaking trumpet to shout orders to the brace-tenders and landsmen.
A frenetic minute or two later, Proteus was off the wind, taking it large on her starboard quarters, her yards still groaning, her sails still clattering and slatting as they refilled.
"Mister Wyman?" Lewrie called from the quarterdeck nettings as he looked down into the ship's waist, searching for his Second Officer in charge of the main battery of guns. "Do you ready both batteries, just in case." Lt. Wyman was an angelic but eager young fellow, prone to a flushed, gingery complexion when excited, as he most certainly was at that moment. Lewrie could almost imagine he heard Wyman's wide-eyed gulp, and his customary "My goodness gracious!"
"I wish us to be the biter, today, sir… not the bit!" "Aye aye, sir!" Wyman piped back, springing to redirect his gun-captains and quarter-gunners, his powder monkeys and excess crewmen on the run-out, train and breeching tackles over to larboard, then to run in the 12-pounders, remove their tompions and load with powder and shot, then open the gun-ports and run them out in-battery… just in case.
Proteus sloughed her way further alee toward the gap, the only clear and unimpeded water open to her, into that sour, towering pall of gunsmoke, coastal haze, and low cloud scud, with her bowsprit and jib-boom, forecastle and chase guns, then her foremast, becoming indistinct.
By sound, Lewrie tried to plot the dangers; astern, now, where Venerable, Ardent, and Triumph were hammering away, being answered with Dutch broadsides; to the West, where Vice-Admiral Onslow was breaking through the rear of the Dutch line, and a general cannonading roared. Nothin' much in between, though, Lewrie thought; yet! "Deck, there!" a lookout howled. "Ship o' the line, starboard and abeam! Dutch flag on 'er fore jack!"
"Bear away, Mister Langlie… make her head Sou'east, and run 'both sheets aft' off the wind!" Lewrie quickly snapped.
Boom! Boom! Two quick cannon barks from that ship's focs'le chase-guns, and six or nine pound round-shot went sizzling and moaning overhead and astern! As their blooms of powder smoke blossomed, the Dutch warship seemed to melt away, to grow fuzzier and less distinct in the fog. A moment later, it was as if she had never been!
"Gap's not as wide as I hoped," Lewrie confessed in a soft voice, as if loath to speak too loudly and be rediscovered… with a broad-side, next time! "Mister Langlie, a cast of the lead."
They were now running full off the wind, with the shifting and curling mists traveling with them, for Proteus could sail no faster than the wind could blow; Sou'east, toward a coast that ran Nor'east, shallow and filled with shoals and bars!
"Eight fathom! Eight fathom with this line!"
That's only thirty feet of water under our keel, Lewrie thought, in a quandary; we draw about eighteen feet aft. Put about… soon!
"Two points a'weather, Mister Langlie," Lewrie ordered. "We'll start circlin' back, anew. Hopefully, well clear of that…"
"Deck, there! Two brigs… two points off t'larboard bows!" "Ready the larboard battery!" Lewrie shouted, "Hop to it, sirs! Mister Wyman? Ready quarterdeck carronades, as well."
Spectral, grey-on-grey forms emerged, turning hard-edged, gaining colour. A two-masted brig o' war was cocked up to weather, motionless, with her stern towards Proteus, a perfectly helpless target for her guns! With none but stern-chasers able to fire back, her fragile stern timbers, transom, and galleries so easily shattered, turning her inner decks and gun-deck into bowling alleys for hurtling shot, it'd be a brutal buggering, a rape, and quick, wholesale murder!
"Stand by… on the up-roll!" Lt. Wyman yelled, brandishing his sword, eager to slice it down to release Hell.
"Avast, Mister Wyman!" Lewrie countermanded. "Hold your fire!"
Dutch officers were at the brig's taffrail, shouting and waving frantically; a white waistcoat was wig-wagged, in sign of surrender or an urgent truce.
For there was a second brig o' war a bit beyond the first, down by the head and canted far to larboard, sinking from the swatting that Venerable had given her earlier. Her yards and masts hung in shambles of torn rigging and sails, canted forward and nearly horizontal as she heeled over. Dozens of men thrashed and yelled in the water between the two brigs, some swimming to the over-crowded boats the first brig had lowered. Dozens more sailors clustered at her larboard bulwarks, now almost awash, tossing over hatch-gratings, anything that would buoy them up, whilst some tried to manhandle their own damaged boats off the cross-deck boat tier beams and into the water before she went under.
The near Dutch brig o' war fired one forward gun, to leeward, in a plea for gentlemanly conduct and mercy!
"Mister Wyman, one starboard gun to fire, to leeward."
"Aye, sir!"
God, but it would've been beautiful! Lewrie sadly thought, as Proteus ghosted past the brig's stern at close range; one broadside up her stern, and she 'd have sunk before her sister!
But, as a 6-pounder from the forecastle fired, Lewrie only lifted his cocked hat to doff it in salute, and the Dutch captain and his officers solemnly doffed their fore-and-aft bicorne hats high over their heads in reply.
"A point more to starboard, Mister Langlie. Keep us circlin'."
"Aye aye, sir. Poor devils."
"Commissioner Proby at Chatham told me that the Dutch require all their sailors to learn to swim," Lewrie off-handedly informed him. "And if they drown, they roll them over a keg laid on its side, until the victim coughs and spews up what he's swallowed or inhaled, so they stand a decent chance… if they got off that other brig, unwounded."
"I see, sir," Langlie replied. "Damn' odd, though, sir. Never seen the like… not in a full-blown battle, that is, Captain."
"What, the bloody bicorne hats?" Lewrie shrugged it off. "You're right… I've never seen the like, either! They may be all the 'go,' but you'll never see a British officer in one! Too damn' Frenchified."
Proteus sailed on, bearing away, and the two Dutch brigs o' war were enveloped in the gloom and smoke once more. A quick peek into the compass bowl showed Lewrie that their frigate was now headed just a bit West of South, away from that treacherous coast, almost abeam what wind there was, and still turning up to weather, the hull beginning to heel, the sluice of water 'round her gurgling and sighing more urgently. It was a hopeful sound.
"Nine fathom! Nine fathom t'this line!"
That news was hopeful, too; as was the dimly perceptible thinning of the haze, smoke and mist, the sky ahead and North'rd brighter, as if within moments they could sail out into sunshine, and safety.
"Deck, there! Three-master, one point off t'starboard bows! I think she's a frigate! Dutch flags! Bearin' Easterly!"
"Dammit!" Lewrie spat, peering intently into the smoke to spot what the lookout could see from aloft. "This is worse than tryin' to cross the Strand in a thick Thames fog! Coaches to right and left…" "There, sir!" Mr. Langlie all but yelped, pointing. As if a stage curtain had been raised, a Dutch frigate appeared just off their starboard bows, crossing their course almost at right angles, her quarterdeck staff almost leaping with surprise as they also pointed and jabbered, now silhouetted against the mists.
"Ready, starboard battery, Mister Wyman! Helm hard alee, helmsmen! Lay her full and by! Brace in, Mister Langlie! We'll shoot her up the arse, 'stead of that poor brig! Stand by to fire as you bear! Mister Devereux?"
His elegant and aristocratic Officer of Marines stepped forward.
"Lay waste her quarterdeck… your best marksmen in the tops and along the starboard gangway!" Lewrie insisted, his words tumbling out in a rush, urgent from the closeness and quickness of the situation. "I want grenadoes, too… lashings of 'em!"
"Aye sir… two bags full!" Lt. Blase Devereux answered, saluting, but with a tongue-in-cheek joy. "Marksmen!" he bawled, turning away.
Long musket-shot, Lewrie speculated as the Dutch frigate sailed on Eastwards, opening the range, her brailed-up main course lashing as it was freed and hauled down to increase her speed; 'bout a third of a cable as our bows come abeam her transom?
"As you bear!" Lt. Wyman was screeching, sword aloft again. "On the up-roll! Fire!"
First, a 6-pounder chase-gun, shrill and sharp; then one of the 24-pounder carronades, a "Smasher" that Lewrie had shifted forward to the forecastle shortly after taking command, for Proteus had the fullness of form under her bows to bear the weight. The first of the starboard 12-pounders, the long-barreled Blomefield Pattern guns, erupted, followed by a slow blasting as each of the remaining twelve guns along the starboard side came level. Lastly, the quarterdeck 6-pounders and the pair of 24-pounder carronades mounted there also belched and roared.
Muskets aloft and along the bulwarks spat and crackled, as well.
"Uuppp… yours!" Lewrie shouted in mad joy to see his round shot strike, one at a time, with the deadly, metronomic pace of a good gun salute! Quarter-galleries, the sash windows of the Dutch captain's great-cabins, the small ports of the officer's gun-room immediately below, the taffrail and the lanthorns and posts, her transom wood, along with her thick rudder post and rudder, were smashed in! Pieces of her double-wheel and compass binnacle went flying, her mizenmast shuddered and jerked, her lower spanker boom sagged, broken in three pieces, and guns run-out on her larboard side, facing the unseen British battle line, jerked, tilted, and slewed in their ports as they were struck and shifted by the howling weight of metal bowling down inside her at more than 1,200 feet per second!
"Too far for grenadoes, sir… sorry," Lt. Devereux said with a sorrowful expression. "Still… we gave them a good peppering."
"She's turning up, sir!" the Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, noted. "Can't see just how, with her rudder and helm shot up so thorough."
"To unmask her larboard battery… the one that was manned," Lewrie realised at once. "Mister Langlie, ready to tack! We'll fall below her on larboard tack, and use our ready-loaded larboard guns to serve her another stern rake!"
"Give her the wind-gauge sir?" Mister Winwood queried.
"If Admiral Duncan can fight from loo'rd, then so can we, sir," he replied. "Her starboard ports are closed, she ain't ready, and with any luck at all, they've got the wind up. Quick-around, lads! Hurry!"
"Ease helm, ease off jib sheets… haul weather mizen to windward… tend lee mizen sheet!" Langlie was babbling, too, urgently ordering what was usually a staid rite. "Let go foresheets, check the lee forebrace, check the fore topbowline… rise, tacks and sheets!"
"Be ready, Mister Wyman… as you bear!" Lewrie urged. He went to the nettings overlooking the waist to watch as each gun-captain put a fist in the air to indicate readiness, the trigger-lines to the flintlock strikers taut in their other hands.
Yards, blocks, and parrels crying, Proteus came up to the eye of the wind, hesitated for a dreadful second as if she'd miss stays and become a motionless victim, then slowly swung farther to starboard with a breeze beginning to tickle her sails. "Now, mains'l haul!"
"Yes, by God!" Lewrie exulted, now rapt with battle-fever, his usual state, with all thought of stoicism and the sang-froid of a true English captain quite flown his head.
"As you bear…fire!" Lt. Wyman shouted, slashing down his sword in a glittering arc as they crossed the Dutch frigate's stern once more, this time at an acute angle, left-to-right.
Timber shattered, side planking was ripped away and flung as if a tornado had struck her! Her mizen groaned and shook once more, yards turning and spiralling as the lower mast was shot through below decks, and shedding sailors and Dutch Marines from the fighting top in a tangle of rigging and upper spars, releasing aft tension to her mainmast, that groaned and canted forward, too.
At an angle, yes, but closer this time, at half a hundred yards, and they could hear the screams and howls as their roundshot tore down the gun-deck, open from end-to-end; hear the thuds and crashes of shot
tearing away carline posts and turning stout timbers to clouds of splinters that flew about madly, swiftly, ripping into flesh, breaking bone, as merciless as Col. Shrapnel's case-shot shells that exploded in clouds of musket balls!
Her rudder and her transom post, with the pintles and gudgeons that held it in place, were turned to kindling. And, without a rudder, and with the loss of her balancing mizen sails to counter the pressure on her foresails, the Dutch frigate sagged offwind, falling off to parallel Proteus as she sailed past.
"Damme!" one of the helmsmen gasped as the enemy's gun-ports on her starboard side opened, hinging upward, as here and there the dark snouts of readied guns jerked into view! It would not be a complete or ordered broadside, but at this close range, it would be a blow to the bowels!
"Flat on the deck!" Lewrie shouted to his crew, though standing with his hands behind his back, planting his feet to receive the blow with courage… even if his innards had just turned to gurgly water! B-b-boom!
The Dutch broadside stuttered, perhaps with only ten of her guns. Lewrie had time to count gun-ports, now that she was abeam them.
Ten out of fourteen, he thought with a wince, as the thundrous roar surrounded him, making his heart flutter with its nearness; she's a thirty-six, but thank God those ain't eighteen-pounders!
Proteus sounded as if she was screaming, with those hideous parrot squawks as roundshot tore clean through her sides; Rwwwarrwwk! then thud and crash! She jumped and trembled, juddering enough to toss him inches off the deck, then rise to meet him as he dropped with his knees flexed. Hot gusts of wind pummeled at him as he opened one eye to see if he, and his ship, were still in one piece, or among the living.
Shot his bolt, Lewrie thought, hot anger flushing him that he'd been fooled into reach of the Dutch gunners; now, it's our turn!
"Everyone up! Man your guns! Load, load, load!" he shouted.
The Dutch had fired low, English fashion, "twixt wind and water" instead of emulating the long-range firing of their allies the French, who preferred firing high, to dis-mast and cripple enemy ships, so they could be out-manoeuvred and taken… or fled, if things went against them.
He daren't even look over the side, to see damage done to his beautiful new frigate, how shattered she might be below! Someone would come run tell him, he was mortal-certain.
The Dutch frigate was close, sagging down against Proteus, and Proteus was slowing, with the light, gun-shot wind stolen from her by the sails and rigging of the Dutch, up to windward of her!
Damme for goin ' under, too! he chastised himself; now, we 're to be hull to hull, with no chance of slippin' off!
They would fight like line-of-battle ships, instead of dancing, weaving, and sparring; locked yardarm-to-yardarm, guns blasting with the muzzles almost touching the enemy, taking fire in like manner!
"Load and fire… point-blank! Mister Devereux?"
"Captain, sir?"
"Think it's close enough for grenadoes, now, do you?"
"I do indeed, sir," Devereux replied with a slight grin, drawing his smallsword and shouting at his Marines aloft to light fuses, to get their light swivel guns firing like one-inch bored shotguns, filled with langridge or bags of pistol balls. "Sir… pardon my suggesting it, but… were I you, Captain, I'd pace about. Don't give their marksmen a chance at you."
"If it gets thick, Mister Devereux, I'll lurk behind you. With that handsome red coat of yours, I'm sure you're the finer target."
Wyman got his guns going again, firing at will, as fast as the bores could be swabbed out, reloaded, and run out. Thirteen guns, first; then only twelve as one was up-ended, then eleven. The Dutch must have loaded and prepared that one, good broadside, though, and hadn't crew enough still on their feet to serve their pieces quite so quickly. The Dutch response was eight guns, then seven, then six.
It was deafening, howling chaos, loud enough to make sailors and Marines bleed from their ears and noses. Between the titanic blasts from heavy guns, the barks of swivels, the crack of muskets and pistols, and the dull bangs from flung grenadoes created a continual drumming. Ball spanged and caromed from gun barrels, thonked into timbers and tore out gouts of dust, splinters, and lead splatters. Proteus's quarterdeck was quickly quilled with torn-up slivers of holystoned wood, making it hard to walk. The surgeon's mates, Mr. Hodson and the laconic French йmigrй
Mr. Maurice Durant, made continual trips up from below with the narrow, rope-strapped carrying boards borne by their loblollymen to haul shaken and wounded men below. The dead were piled about the bases of the masts!
"Yah pistols, sah," his Coxswain, Andrews, said, fetching him a brace of double-barreled Mantons. "I thought ya might like havin' yer Ferguson rifle, too."
Lewrie stuck the pistols in his waist-belt, slung the cartouche box over his shoulder, and accepted a horn of priming powder, quickly loading the deadly-accurate breechloader rifled musket. Shooting back, he decided, beat pacing about like a fart in a trance, all hollow! He took aim at an officer in a bicorne hat, swung slowly to follow him as he paced about, bellowing and waving a sword, and…
"Got you!" he exulted after the muzzle-smoke cleared, seeing his foeman fall into the arms of a pair of Dutch mates, then drop below the bulwarks and disappear. One turn of the screw-breech lever, below the trigger and lock assembly; lower the barrel, rip a cartouche open with his teeth, shove it ball-end forward into the barrel, then screw in the opposite direction to close the breech. Frizzen at half-cock, the pan open for a touch of priming powder; snap the frizzen shut; draw the lock to full cock, and search for another target… a thickset gunner's mate or something like that, up on the gangway and urging his crews to load… a careful aim, a pent breath…
"Got you!" he crowed again.
"Sir, their fire's slacking!" Langlie pointed out, coming over to his side. "We're shooting her to pieces, they don't have Smashers, and we're turnin' her into a sieve! They're gatherin' amidships, with pikes and pistols. I think they're about to board us!"
By then, Lewrie was half-deaf and it took concentration to heed Langlie's words, mostly by lip-reading. But the only cannon fire he could hear was now under his own feet. He lowered his gaze to see the damage done to the Dutch frigate's hull, and it did, indeed, resemble a sieve or colander-one could not find a stretch of her scantling more than ten feet long without a ragged, star-shaped hole punched in it! He saw sailors and Marines gathering, cutlasses waving, surviving officers, mates or midshipmen shoving them into order…
"Mister Wyman! Last rounds, then take up arms!" Lewrie called down to the gun-deck. "Boarders! Mister Devereux, your Marines, down from the tops, and ready to re-"
Something went Bang-splang-fwee! off a quarterdeck 6-pounder, a blink before Lewrie felt as if someone had just hit his left arm with a waggon-tongue! He was spun about in a half-circle leftward, to trip over his own feet and tumble to the deck!
"Goddammit!" he meant to shout, but it came out rather weakly, even to his ears. 'Cause I'm gun-deaf? he had to wonder. Suddenly, he was shivering cold, with only the cattle-brand heat in his arm to warm him. He looked up at Langlie and Devereux, as if from the bottom of a well, with the sides blotting out most of the sky, and…
"B-boarders!" he insisted, the ringing in his ears smothering his own words.
"Surgeon's Mate!" someone was keening.
"Never fear, sir… we'll take her for you," someone very like Langlie whispered, leaning down over his face as he was jostled by many hands, soaring aloft like a freed soul, with something hard and narrow under him as he was quickly bound with ropes like some damned soul for spitting and roasting on the Devil's rфtisserie.
"Proteuses… away boarders! Away boarders!"
"No, repel boarders, not…!"
He was sure he'd said it, but no one paid him any mind but for Mr. Durant, who was making clucking noises and shaking his head sadly.
Daylight was gone; he was plunged into reeking, foetid darkness, feet-first into the "fug" of unwashed bodies, bilges, and stinks; below into glim-lit Hades. To the cockpit on the orlop, where the wailing and shrieking of the eternally damned soared and chorused in an atonal agony. Those saved, above, shouted Hosannas of blissful and eternal joy- though they were making a rather noisy, tinkery, metallic and feu de joie music along with their paeans!
"It must come off, at once," Mr. Thomas Shirley, the twentyish surgeon, lowed like a cow, spouting some dry, esoteric dog-Latin.
"Non, non… ze humerus is broken, not shattered, m'sieur," Durant (or somebody Froggish, anyway!) insisted. "See, ze axillary responds when I stick 'is palm, and…"
"Ow! Bloody…!"
"Ze blood loss suggest ze axillary artery is non torn, aussi? Cut eez coat and shirt off, s'il vous plaоt… gently. Ze ball pass through complete, you see? M'sieur Capitaine? Drink zees, an' think ze pleasant thought." Followed by more "Ahumms" and Latin gibberish.
A large pewter cup of rum was shoved under Lewrie's nose and he drank it down, just before a leather gag was put between his teeth to bite on when the pain got severe… which it did!
They probed, retracting wool coat and silk shirt shards, taking out slivers of bone and tiny splashes of lead, Durant insisting that a watered tincture of brandy be splashed around inside the wound, over the instruments, before they squeezed, twisted, and pried at his arm to see how it lined up before getting shot… and re-set it!
"A simple fracture, after all, sir."
"Sonofagoddamnbitchl'llbloodykillyourmiserableFrogass!"
"You are welcome, M'sieur Capitaine. Next?"
He was bound in linen, with lots of batting, also soaked in the French йmigrй's watered brandy, that stung like Blazes; over the bandages, two wooden belaying pins were bound taut with twine; some spare Number Eight sailcloth, the lightest aboard, was fashioned into a neat sling; and he was stowed forrud on a straw-filled mattress, armed with another hefty measure of rum, then ignored.
"We took her, sir! We took her!" Langlie was crowing about a quarter-hour later, coming to his side with flecks of blood (hopefully someone else's!) on his coat facings, his cheek, and shirt. "Oh, 'twas a hard fight, but we took her! You were right to call for boarders, Captain Lewrie. Had they formed and attempted to board us, well…! But we beat them to it, and broke their spirit into the bargain."
Lewrie could but gawp at him (a trifle drunkenly by then) and wonder what the Blazes this idiot was babbling about!
"Very good, sir. Just get me out of this cess-pit and back to my roomin' house, 'fore the wife finds me, hey?"
"Sir?" Lt. Langlie gawped in puzzlement.
"Oh, never mind, I'm too sleepy t'care."
"And that, sirs, is how I conquered a Dutch frigate," Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, concluded with a blithe laugh. "Stood up shirtless, strapped to a carryin' board by the windward mizen shrouds, with a cup of rum in my hands, towin' out our prize! Speaking of… allow me to propose another toast. To Lieutenant Anthony Langlie, my able First Officer, and the true hero of the piece. He placed the Batavian Navy Orangespruit, a thirty-six gun Fifth Rate frigate, on a platter for me, and served her up… well done!"
His fellow diners gave out a loud, prolonged cheer, along with the curious onlookers who had gathered to peer over their shoulders as the tale was told, and they clapped and laughed, as well. Handsome women in the height of Fashion that season fanned and flushed, or made as if they'd swoon. They raised a rousing "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow," to which Lewrie nodded and smiled, raising his port glass in answering salute and acknowledgement.
Of course, it made a good tale, a 32-gun taking a 36-gun; what the public expected their Navy to accomplish. Of course, he did not tell them of his mistakes, of stumbling about in the smoke, damn near lost, of his sin of over-confidence, of yielding the wind-gauge to the Dutch so stupidly, being drawn like a lamb to the slaughter into the mouths of the guns of a doughty, wily, and desperate enemy captain, who had taken much the same precautions as he, to be the biter and not the bit, that day!
No, this crowd wouldn't appreciate unvarnished truth, nor would they tolerate another toast, this to the dead, the maimed and gutted, to those men now minus limbs or sight, and doomed to a lifetime of poverty ashore, with but a pittance of a pension to atone for a too-brief moment of glory.
Nineteen killed, listed with the simple "D-D" in ship's books for Discharged, Dead and interred at sea, out of sight and mind. And twenty-nine wounded, too, with fourteen of those merely Discharged… landed ashore at Sheerness and lumbered off to a naval hospital, never to return to duty, should they survive the ministrations.
For the Dutch, it had been a slaughter-pit, as well; over sixty dead and over an hundred cruelly wounded. That was the sort of harvest that England 's public liked; the greater the number of enemy slain, the higher
cost in British lives, well… the greater the honour! Losing captains had been knighted for bravery after such fights, since they'd run up a high "butcher's bill" of their own people before striking!
Perhaps he should tell them the cost, he speculated; they might get a vicarious thrill from so much distant blood! All due to his work, his cockiness, his famed "luck," and his "tradition of victory"!
While they cheered and clapped, his beloved Proteus languished in a Sheerness graving dock, her guns and stores warehoused ashore as the shipwrights repaired her many hurts. She was as nearly shattered as the captured Orangespruit! Damn 'em all! he thought; no matter what face I put on it, 'twas a costly damn' victory. Something I could never say even to Caroline in strictest privacy. My father, well… he knows of it, he's a military man, I spilled my secret to him, but… Caroline!
He almost felt like breaking down and blubbing in public, after all! And fearing that Dame Fortune had decided to turn on him and feed him to her wolves!
"A flutter of the cards, Captain Lewrie?" Mr. Lumsden asked.
"Ah, no," Lewrie soberly replied. "I feel as if I've stretched my luck far enough, lately. Haven't heard from the Prize-Court yet…"
"Our reckoning, I should think," his father quickly suggested as he spotted his son's wavering. "We should be gettin' home, son, gettin' some part of a good night's rest. Do you gentlemen excuse us? I keep at Willis's Rooms when in town. Do call upon me, and we could pursue the matter of a gentleman's club further, perhaps discover some backers who might also find the notion intriguing…?"
They said their good-nights, gathered their hats and cloaks from the tiler, then stood chilled at the kerb outside whilst a young "daisy kicker" servant of The Cocoa Tree whistled them up a hired carriage to bear them home.