"No no, four drams, at the least, but…!" Wandsworth quibbled. They fussed with one of the quarterdeck carronades, pushing the regular crew out of the way, whose members looked to Lewrie for a clue as to whether they should submit or not. All he could do was toss them a shrug and let the Army piddle.
"Now, then!" Wandsworth announced. "Would you be so good as to let fly, my man? What's your name? Harper? Blaze away, Gun-Captain Harper, blaze away!"
The 24-pounder carronade, never meant to be fired at such high elevation, lurched backwards on its slide-carriage, wood rails groaning and smoking despite the grease and slush slathered on to prevent too much friction, and slammed into the cross-timber at the rear that stopped the recoil.
"You know, sir," the Royal Artillery Lieutenant said, "was it up to me, I'd come up with some sort of snubbers, some screw-jack compressors to increase friction, and reduce recoil."
"Well, it's a thought… ah!" Wandsworth mused, before raising his telescope to peer shoreward for the signalmen. "Well, damme! One hundred paces beyond our troops, and roughly on target! Well, well! I make out… saturation. Twenty… yards… wide, oh how wondrous!"
"Did it do any good?" Lewrie asked once more.
"A fall of hail, twenty yards wide and perhaps twenty deep, sir? Grape and cannister shot?" Wandsworth crowed. "I should imagine that'd take down young trees, Captain Lewrie. Knock more than a few heads to flinders. Here, let's load up all your carronades, and give it a go!"
"Half a dram more, loose poured atop the bagged charges, and a single cannister atop a stand of grape to each barrel," the lieutenant pointed out. "Spread of two degrees 'twixt guns?"
"Yes, that'd share the grief about. Direct the aim of the guns back there, whilst I see to these two," Wandsworth ordered.
"Aft," Lewrie stuck in, feeling he had to contribute something.
"I've my pocket compass," the lieutenant told his senior.
"But of course you do, dear boy." Wandsworth chuckled. "With a bit of luck, and two-and-one-quarter pounds of powder per barrel, we could duplicate these results with the six-pounders, hmm…"
"Once you find the proper angle, I'll send a man forrud to the forecastle and he may lay those guns, as well," Lewrie offered.
"Oh no, sir!" Wandsworth countered. "Once we've found our pace way back here…"
"Aft," Lewrie supplied again, feeling more than useless now.
"I'll send Scaiff to deal with those," Wandsworth bulled on. "That's his name, d'ye know. Now, let's see… hmmm."
This time, all four 24-pounder carronades on the quarterdeck lit off, almost as one, the heavier charges punching the air with an earthquake of sound, and a mountain of roiling smoke, making the ship reel and shiver. For long minutes, with so little wind in the harbour, the gun smoke lingered, only slowly drifting away to let them see the flags waving from the end of the longest pier.
"Think we caused a stir, that time," Wandsworth said. "Thought I heard screamin'… could've been the shot fallin'. Oh, well. Now… dear me, what hath we wrought?"
They had stirred up something. Suddenly, there came a crackle of musketry, brisk and urgent; volley fire, followed by a rolling platoon fire up and down the central lines, punctuated by the louder barks of field guns. Piles of smoke began to build in the forests like the thunderheads of a sea-squall, hanging thick and greasy-grey.
"Under assault, dammit," Wandsworth spat. "Stirred 'em to rise up and charge. Stung 'em to move or die, I'm hoping. Half dram less, and the same loads, if ya please!" he shouted to the gunners. "Ready? Stand clear… by battery… fire!"
This time, they could hear faint and thin screaming! A moment before, there had come the chanting, that chilling "Canga, bafio tй!" shout. Then the screaming. The musketry and cannonfire went on for a minute or two, before fading away to a last few sputtered shots.
"Damn this smoke," Wandsworth said, coughing and fanning the air with his hat, as if that would disperse such a gigantic pall. Proteus was almost completely wreathed with it. "Ah, here's something… well, I'm damned! Charge… broken! Shift… right. Range… same."
"Easier do we haul in on the springs, Mister Wandsworth," Lewrie reminded him. "How far?"
"Oh, 'bout ten or fifteen degrees, I s'pose," Wandsworth mused, conjuring on his slate, and squinting at it and the shore.
"Mister Langlie? Haul in the stern spring-line."
"Aye aye, sir!"
"Deck, there!" a lookout called down. "Ships off the larboard beam… workin' into harbour! Five sail… full-rigged ships! First is a seventy-four!"
Lewrie walked over to the larboard side and raised his telescope, but it was hopeless; Proteus was so swathed in spent powder that everything beyond fifty yards from the deck was lost in a bellicose haze.
"What flag?" Lewrie shouted upwards.
"Ours, sir! Leadin' seventy-four is Halifax! Know her tops'l patches!" the lookout confirmed.
"Did your brigadier send a small boat for aid?" he asked of the Royal Artillery man.
"Might've, but there hasn't been enough time, surely," Wandsworth replied, acting irritated that his work on his slate was interrupted.
"Perhaps not," Lewrie had to agree, thinking that a small boat would barely have had time to reach Port-Au-Prince, and certainly could not have stirred up a rescue force that quickly.
"Just this set of guns, at first," Wandsworth decided, " 'til we are shot in, and then we'll use those up yonder."
"The quarterdeck carronades… then the forecastle guns," Lewrie prompted.
"Whatever you say," Wandsworth muttered, bending over a carronade barrel with a triangular piece of metal; graduated in arcane marks and bearing a plumb-bob. "Challenging, this. No dispart sights, and no elevation screws on your long guns… just the carronades. Do it by guess and by God… oh, well. Ready? By battery… fire!"
It went on for hours under a blazing hot noonday sun, and well into a sultry, airless afternoon. The guns hammered and bellowed and spewed, 'til even the officers bound kerchiefs over their ears to protect their hearing. Proteus reeked of sulfur and rotten-egg fumes, and trickled tendrils of spent powder gases at her planking and seams as if being smoked belowdecks to drive out the rats and insect pests. The swab-buckets and fire-buckets were filled at least twice with water, and the carronade and 6-pounder crews were rotated every half-hour with re-enforcements from the main-battery men, so those relieved could search for a patch of shade and sluice down a tot of water, panting for a single breath of clean air. Shift left, shift right on the spring-lines; reduce the charges and loft murder shorter; add a dram or dram-and-a-half, and spew grape and cannisters of musket balls, sometimes solid roundshot in conjunction with a slightly greater range, all around the perimeter of the town. Wherever there was an upsurge of enemy activity, the guns were there, shot sleeting into the dense forest and undergrowth to the point that, whenever the smoke cleared a bit, they could see whole new clearings, whole new glades, that their guns had made.
"By God, Captain Lewrie, d'ye know, there just might be something in this indirect fire twaddle!" Wandsworth chortled, clapping his hands together over and over in glee. "There's an article in it, for certain. Some mathematics to be worked out, so others could copy what we've done, but… hmmm. Dare I imagine it could someday be termed the Wandsworth System, hey? Usin' naval guns as mortars, and usin' flag signals t'mask one's own batteries? Woolwich Arsenal, t'be sure, but…! Perhaps the Royal Academy, too, for the science of it?"
" 'Scuse me, Cap'um," Foster, the Yeoman of the Powder, said as he scampered past the First Officer, after receiving permission to be on the quarterdeck. "We've run clean outta made-up cartridge bags for the carronades an' six-pounders, and fired off almost three whole kegs o' powder. Haveta break out another, Cap'um… outta the second tier."
"How long?" Lewrie asked, nigh deaf and having to lean close to hear what the fellow was saying.
"Quarter hour, Mister Bess the Gunner's Mate says, sir."
"Very well, thankee, Foster. Captain Wandsworth?"
"Hey?"
"Captain Wandsworth?" Lewrie repeated, louder and nearer.
"Heard ye the first time, no need t'shout, d'ye know, Captain Lewrie," Wandsworth said, cupping a hand to his ear, even so.
"We have to cease fire! Out of made bags, and low on powder!"
"Uhm, sir…" Foster added, still on the quarterdeck, most likely for a breath of air himself, Lewrie didn't wonder. "We're low on grape and cannister, too. Mighty low. We can make up stands from the twelve-pounder supply, but it'll take some time, Cap'um."
"Low on grape and cannister, too!" Lewrie shouted to Wandsworth.
"Yes, I could use a glass!" Wandsworth shouted back, beaming.
Exasperated at the bobbing, grinning fool, Lewrie took hold of Wandsworth's slate and wrote his message down.
"Oh! Silly me!" Wandsworth barked. "Yes, we'll cease fire!"
And the silence, after so long, was almost painful.
Lewrie took out his watch and opened the face, shocked that it was nearly 5 p.m., an hour into the First Dog. He looked forward and saw a ship's boy, smeared with powder stains from serving as a monkey to a forecastle gun, peering into a sandglass and ready to ring the ship's bell to mark the hour. Someone may have done that for all the time they'd been firing, for all Lewrie knew; to his senses, everything rang, by then. "Mister Coote?" Lewrie called down to the waist to the purser. "How is the scuttle butt?"
"Bone dry, sir. I've sent hands to break out another cask. And the rum issue was cancelled, as well. Should I…?"
"Aye. Fetch it up. Bosun? Be ready to pipe 'Clear Decks And Up Spirits,' soon as the water and rum are on deck," Lewrie bade. "Make it a full measure, Mister Coote. No 'sippers' or 'gulpers.' "
"How long, sir?" Wandsworth asked, licking dry lips.
"At least a half hour, sorry t'say," Lewrie told him. "We are not supplied with grape and cannister the way your Army guns are. You have what… half your caissons full of that, half of roundshot?"
"About that, yessir," Wandsworth agreed.
"We carry about one-in-five loads. We're almost depleted."
"Hmmm… perhaps, once yon two-decked ship of the line comes into harbour, I should go aboard her, then," Wandsworth decided, gesturing with his chin towards Halifax and her small convoy, that had yet to get within three miles of an anchorage. The wind, as it always did under a long cannonading, had been shot to a funereal stillness, and 3rd Rates were nowhere near as agile or as weatherly in light airs as a frigate. It might be sundown before Halifax hauled up within hailing distance, much less gun-range.
"She may not be able to anchor as close inshore as us," Lewrie speculated. "Might be better, did we borrow grape and cannister from her. She mounts twenty-four pounders, those should fit into our carronades. But once the six-pounder stands and bags are gone…"
"Ah, I see," Wandsworth seemed to agree. "And, did Scaiff and I 'shift our flags,' as it were, we'd have to recalculate our figures for the height of her gundecks, distance from shore, and all. I agree. Better we borrow than let that ship supercede us, Captain Lewrie."
"Uhm… sorry I have to ask, Captain Wandsworth, but… once it's dark, what do we do?" Lewrie wondered aloud.
"Ah, well… hmmm!" Wandsworth said, tugging at an ear, as if trying to get it to work properly once more. "Now that's a poser, if I do say so. Can't see signals from my men or yours, after dark. We could fire blind, since we know we're striking beyond our trenchworks. But, do the Samboes pull back to rest, we'd be wasting our shot in harassing fire. Might keep 'em awake, might not."
"And then once they come at our troops in the morning, we would really be low on effective shot," Lewrie grimly concluded.
"Well, it may be moot, after all, sir," Wandsworth said with a weary grin. "Surely, those ships coming into port are here to take us off. Another day of this, and we'll have everything loaded aboard the little ships, and won't leave the Samboes a torn shoe or dirty sock."
"One may pray," Lewrie said, nodding with hopeful agreement. He was weary, too, even from mostly standing and pacing about, on his feet for hours. He strode over to the larboard side, hands pressed against his kidneys to ease the kink in his back, arching it, and lifting his feet high and shaking his calves to spur life back into them and ease the slow burn in his soles.
"Signal, sir!" Midshipman Grace yelped. "From Halifax… our number. 'Up Anchor' and… ' Make Way ' sir. She's spelling out…"
There was a much longer string of code flags to interpret.
" 'Clear… Way… To Quays,' sir!" Grace puzzled out slowly.
"Damme, do we move, Mister Wandsworth's calculations'll be off, and he'd have to start from scratch," Lewrie muttered. "Mister Grace? Hoist 'Unable,' followed by 'Am Engaged.' And we can only hope all of this gun smoke'll tell 'em what we've been up to."
A new cask of water was fetched to the main deck; the Marines, with muskets and fixed bayonets, and fife and drum, ceremoniously got the gay red-and-gilt rum keg to the forecastle belfry, and the people began to queue up for their tots, chattering and laughing along as the merry tinkle of the string of copper measuring/drinking cups jangled.
"She repeats her first signals, sir," Mr. Grace said, turning a worried eye to his captain, knowing that there was bad blood between Captain Blaylock and Lewrie already.
"We'll explain, once in hailing distance," Lewrie said, though feeling that he was in for a "cobbing," no matter what he did.
Boom-boom-boom-b'boom. The drums began once more, now that the punishing guns, the ones that struck from nowhere, had ceased. A shot sounded, a thin and weak crack! from a lone musket. A desultory spatter of two more, a gust of gunfire, then the field guns began to bark anew. There was a massive shout, a challenging roar that caused a blizzard of musketry in reply, and then things fell silent again.
"Flag's waving!" Wandsworth's deputy, Scaiff, pointed out.
"Need us again, I expect. My my," Wandsworth grieved wearily.
"Your midshipman fellow's runnin' off inland," Scaiff said.
"Who? What?" Lewrie snapped, returning to the starboard side. "What the Devil? He's takin' a horse!"
"Into the woods. Curious," Scaiff said, yawning. "That rum ye issue, Captain Lewrie? Could a poor soldier get a taste? I'm dry as dust."
"Aye, go forrud and tell the Purser you want a tot," Lewrie muttered, intent with his spyglass on the doings ashore, wondering why young Nicholas would go dashing off towards the trenchworks so suddenly.
"Your midshipman fellow's runnin' off inland," Scaiff said.
"Who? What?" Lewrie snapped, returning to the starboard side. "What the Devil? He's takin' a horse!"
"Into the woods. Curious," Scaiff said, yawning. "That rum ye issue, Captain Lewrie? Could a poor soldier get a taste? I'm dry as dust."
"Aye, go forrud and tell the Purser you want a tot," Lewrie muttered, intent with his spyglass on the doings ashore, wondering why young Nicholas would go dashing off towards the trenchworks so suddenly.
"Water, sir?" Aspinall offered, coming onto the quarterdeck.
"God, yes, thankee," Lewrie said, turning to accept a tall mug and drain half of it in one gulp.
"Fresh batch, sir. Good an' cool from the orlop."
"Quite fine, quite fine," Lewrie answered, sighing with contentment, and relief. His mouth had been as dry as a private soldier's, a man who'd been biting off cartridges all day. " Toulon 's hiding down below, I take it?"
"Down in the midships hold, sir. Like he always does. Poor ol' puss, the guns scare him somethin' pitiful," Aspinall chuckled.
The sound of gunfire in the forest erupted again, louder this time, more sustained and urgent, the volleys of two-ranked soldiers on top of each other as fast as they could load, the artillery crashing a steady tolling up and down the lines.
And men were running down the short streets of the town to the docks, men in red coats bearing weapons, but bearing the corners of a series of blankets, too… jogging along as fast as they could, with wounded! Thirty or so sentries who had been guarding the diminishing piles of stores were massing, led by a sword-waving officer who looked very much like that Major James who had come aboard earlier, and were trotting double-time the other direction, into the forest.
Lewrie lifted his telescope to see better, and found a figure in white slop-trousers and a short midshipman's coat, hatless, waving at him! It was Nicholas! And his right sleeve and hand were smeared with gore! He clung with his left hand to a side of a blanket which bore a wounded man, and tears could be seen coursing down his face in terror or grief.
"Andrews!" Lewrie roared for his cox'n. "Away my gig to shore! Mister Nicholas is coming back wounded. Hurry, man, hurry!"
"Awn de way, sah! Furfy, Sharp, you two bastids, ovah de side!"
Lewrie felt glued to the ocular of his spyglass, wishing for a stronger one, ruing his cheapness on his last shopping trip to London chandlers. Nicholas trotted-no, staggered!-closer to the end of the longest pier, four soldiers still bearing their burden-to which he clung with a white-faced death grip-'til they reached the very end and laid it down.
Midshipman Nicholas sank to his knees beside the blanket, then lifted the man in it, taking the wounded fellow by the chin to try to shake him back to consciousness, pointing out towards their ship.
It was Midshipman Sevier… as pale as death!
"Row like the Devil, Andrews, they're both wounded!" Lewrie bellowed, his innards churning to think that his decision might have gotten both lads maimed or killed.
"Eh! Eh! Bomba! Heu! Heu! Canga, bafio tй!"
The enemy's chant seemed a cruel mockery.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Boat's comin' alongside!"
"Pass word for the Surgeon Mister Shirley!" Lewrie shouted.
"Signallers are waving once more, Captain Lewrie," Captain Wandsworth pointed out. "Hellish urgent-like? Do you have any cannister or grape stands remaining, I think it's needed something desperate."
"Very well…" Lewrie began.
"Excuse me, sir, but Halifax spells out. 'Up Anchor' and 'Move.' "
"He can go bugger himself!" Lewrie snapped. "Second hoist for Halifax.. . make 'request all your cannister and grape-shot.' That'll keep that pestiferous bastard busy, Mister Grace. Well? Run and send it!" Lewrie growled, noting Grace's wide-eyed goggling of the stir by the entry-port, where Sevier and Nicholas were being hoisted aboard.
"Aye aye, sir," Grace gulped, and dashed for his flag locker and halliards.
"Mister Foster? Break open the shot lockers and make up charges for the guns, quick as you can, and keep it coming 'til it's completely gone," Lewrie said, wanting to dash to the entry-port himself to see to Sevier and Nicholas. Things were coming too thick and fast to suit him, unlike the long minutes of an evolution at sea.
"Charge yer guns… shot yer guns…" a grizzled quarter-gunner was intoning to his weary crews, who had set their rum rations down on the quarterdeck, that priceless elixir of ease abandoned for a rare once, in the face of need. Other crewmen who had gone forward for
their rum ration had gulped it down then returned to their posts, their prime moment of relaxation and jollity stolen by stern Duty.
Wandsworth and Scaiff fiddled and calculated, gazing heavenward and counting on their fingers, muttering and whispering to themselves before reaching a mutual decision. A quick trot down the deck to see to the elevation, and…
"By broadside.. .fire!"
The 6-pounder long guns and the stubby 24-pounder carronades lit off together, shuddering Proteus anew, refogging her in a reeking pall of powder smoke, and making everyone's ears ring. Seconds later, the sound of musketry ashore rose in volume, crackling down the line of trenchworks like the advance of a brushfire, with the crisp sound of burning twigs. There was a roar of several light field pieces, then a howl of human voices raised in rage or fear or glee, the daft bray of a foxhunting horn to urge them on, just before another musket volley.
"Samboes broke the entrenchments," Wandsworth found time to say, tugging at his ear again, "and I think we just saw 'em out. Where your midshipman was wounded, I shouldn't wonder."
"Mister Langlie, you have the deck," Lewrie said, going to the gangway where Sevier was being hoisted inboard.
"Easy with him, lads," Mr. Shirley was saying, already clad in his "butcher's apron" of light leather for surgery, his sleeves rolled to the elbows. The grey army-issue blanket was lowered to the deck, already half soaked in gore, and Mr. Shirley sadly shook his head for a moment as the loblolly boys transferred Sevier's body to a carrying board, an eight-man mess table with rope straps to bind the patient to it, and other rope straps for lifting.
Shirley looked up at Lewrie and grimaced in sadness with another wee shake of his head. Sevier had been savaged by thrusts from bayonets or swords; the cloth and lace of his shirt, the flap of his white breeches were cut open, baring the hideous wounds beneath, cloth stained bright red over purpling puckers and slashes. His face was a new-paper white, his eyes unfocused, and his breath a faint, labouring wheeze, with small flecks of foamy blood on his lips.
"Mister Durant, Mister Hodson… see to Mister Nicholas, while I see Mister Sevier below," Shirley said, getting to his feet and leading the loblolly boys and their burden to the gun-deck ladder.
"What happened, Mister Nicholas?" Lewrie asked the terrified boy, who stood and shuddered, all but blubbering, as blood dripped from his injured arm.
"S-Samboes, sir," Nicholas replied between chattering teeth, "Hundreds of 'em! Broke the line. They were in the trenchworks with knives and bayonets, killin' our people left and right, and laughing fit to bust, sir! Jemmy, he… him and the Army signallers against a dozen, and him with just a pistol and his dirk! They got that far behind our lines, sir, before… I saw. one of the signalmen running and shouting they were all being slaughtered, and I…"
What little Mister Nicholas needed, first of all, was a hug and a lap, Lewrie thought, but that was impossible; he was a "gentleman volunteer," a future officer.
"I tried, sir, honest I did!" Nicholas wailed, fresh tears coursing down his cheeks, cutting clean runnels in the filth on his face as he shivered, trying to remain "manful" before the ship's people. "But they were jab-bin' him and cuttin' at him after he was down, before we got there, and then they came for me, and they were so big and horrid, sir, and if the soldiers hadn't come… I lost my dirk, sir. I looked for Jemmy's, too, but they took it 'fore they were run back across the trenchworks. I'm sorry, sir! I lost my dirk!"
A gentleman's blade, be it inherited sword or humble dagger, was part of his honour; to Nicholas, he had failed miserably at saving his fellow midshipman and friend, had been bested and wounded when faced with face-to-face combat, and, to top it all, had lost his blade. Sure sign of failure, perhaps even a sign of cowardice, to drop it and run.
The 6-pounders and carronades bellowed again; Lewrie had to wait to speak 'til the echoing roar passed.
"No matter, Mister Nicholas," he said, touching Nicholas on his left shoulder. "You went to his aid like a brave fellow, and helped the Army stop their charge after he rushed to yours. Then you brought him back aboard, so he could be among his shipmates. No shame in any of that."
So he can most-like perish among his shipmates, Lewrie thought.
"Now, let the surgeon's mates tend you," Lewrie said, giving him another reassuring pat on the shoulder before returning to the quarterdeck. But he could hear Mr. Nicholas's cries when they tried to peel his coat off, to cut his shirt sleeve away and lift the cloth from the wound; Nicholas sounded like one of his sons after skinning a knee, and nowhere near a stoic young "gentleman volunteer."
"Ready way up there?" Wandsworth was shouting to the 'gunners on the foc'sle. "Ready, here? Fire!"
Midshipman Grace interrupted Lewrie's gloomy thoughts. " Halifax has hoisted another signal, sir. It's 'Captain Repair on Board.' "
"We still fly 'Unable' and 'Am Engaged,' Mister Grace?" he asked, hands in the small of his back.
"Aye, sir."
"Haul 'em down, then rehoist 'em in reply," Lewrie said with a snarl. "He don't like that, he can go fuck himself."
"Uhm… aye, aye, sir!" Grace said, blushing and tittering.
By dusk, when the wagging signal flags could no longer be read and Proteus had shot away her last stand of grapeshot, her last cannister of musket balls, even the lot scavenged from pre-made loads for the 12-pounder great-guns, the ship fell silent.
Halifax had not responded to her call for shot, but had anchored about a cable's distance away in deeper water, along with the merchant ships she had escorted into Mole Saint Nicholas.
Rather surprisingly, those hired ships had become beehives of activity, disembarking boatloads of soldiers who were quickly rowed to the beaches and quays, followed by heaping piles of supplies, ammunition, and field guns.
When the last shot had been fired, Lewrie called for his cox'n and boat to be rowed over to Halifax. Pointedly, he did not change to a clean uniform, nor scrub his face and hands; the greyness of his uniform from the gun smoke fog would speak for him.
"Excuse me, sir," Mr. Shirley said, just before he could leave the quarterdeck for his gig, and a salute from the side-party. "That poor lad Sevier passed over, sir. And Mister Nicholas… the slash on his arm quite shattered it. We had to take it off, just below the shoulder, Captain."
Lewrie blanched. "Nothing else to be done?"
"No use of it, now, sir," Mr. Shirley replied, "and no feeling in it at all. Half-severed, already, and why he didn't exanguinate on the dock before your boat fetched him is a wonder, Captain."
"Very well, then, Mister Shirley," Lewrie said with a mournful sigh. "You did your best for him… for them both. Thankee."
"We were lucky with you, sir," Shirley admitted. "Those boys, well… there's only so much modern medicine may do, sorry to say."
"Well, then…" Lewrie lamely said in answer, unconsciously massaging his left arm, and turning away.
"Damn you, Captain Lewrie! Damn you for blatant insubordination and arrogance!" Captain Blaylock howled, as soon as Lewrie had been let into his great-cabins under Halifax?, poop. "You frigate captains are all alike, damn your blood… swaggerin' cock-a-hoops who think they hung the bloody moon\ I will lay formal charges before Admiral Parker and see you court-martialed! I'll see you broken, d'ye hear me?"
"That is your right, sir," Lewrie wearily replied, prepared for a "cobbing" since mid-afternoon, and steeled beforehand for any abuse that the choleric Captain Blaylock had in his shot-lockers. "It will also be my right to point out to the court that I was unable to clear the mooring, since I was engaged in supporting the Army ashore. With testimony from the Royal Artillery officers aboard at the time, or the testimony of Brigadier Sir-"
"Blazing away at nothing!" Blaylock bellowed back. "Firing off blank charges, just to excuse your insolence! Firing blind!"
"Indirect fire, sir… lofting grape and cannister to harass the slave troops," Lewrie pointed out.
"There's no such bloody thing!"
"There is now, sir," Lewrie responded, almost ready to chuckle in genuine insolence, too tired and sad to let Blaylock's insults get to him. The only thing that irked was the presence of Halifax 's lieutenants, summoned aft to watch their captain take the hide off an upstart. Lewrie snuck a peek from the corners of his eyes at them; some of the six seemed to enjoy the show, though the much put-upon Duncan and others seemed ashamed of the spectacle, their eyes on the painted deck covering. Disputes between Post-Captains, personal or professional in nature-most especially taking another officer to task or upbraiding a midshipman, petty officer or mate-was not to be done in public. If there was no way to find privacy, it was to be done out of earshot, with no noticeable vitriol or raised voices.
Good officers, good captains don't do it this way, Lewrie told himself; but Blaylock, well… says it all, don't it?
"It's impossible, damn your eyes!" Blaylock insisted.
"Then I suggest you ask of Captain Wandsworth, Royal Artillery, sir," Lewrie coolly rejoined. "He's rather proud of what we did, and is simply panting t'write a paper on it for the Royal Society. Oh, I dare say he'll take all the credit for it, call it the Wandsworth System of Supporting Fires, but he needed Royal Navy guns to do it, sir."
Lieutenant Duncan and three others stifled smirks of glee, even snorts of taboo laughter. There then came a rap on the door.
"Come!" Captain Blaylock snarled, and a wary-looking midshipman entered the great-cabins. "Well, what the Devil is it?"
"Excuse me, Captain sir, but Brigadier General Sir Harold Lamb has come aboard, and…" the boy managed to stutter.
"Well then, fetch him in, damn yer eyes!" Blaylock snapped.
The midshipman gulped, reddened, and dashed out of sight, coming back a long moment later to hold the door open while an Army officer and an aide-de-camp entered the great-cabins, ducking under the beams overhead, and almost managing not to knock their white wigs askew, or bang their noggins on the polished oak.
"Captain Blaylock?" the general officer in all the gilt lace and gimp enquired, fanning his sweaty face in the close warmth of the cabins.
"Sir Harold, sir… welcome aboard," Blaylock said, turning as unctuous as anything and practically oozing from behind his desk to go seize the brigadier's hand. "A glass of something cooling, hey? Well met, sir, well met. Our arrival was more than welcome, I'm bound."