"Ease your helm, hands wear ship! Due north, quartermaster!"
The waisters and idlers sprang to the braces to ease them out to larboard, angling the yards to allow Desperate to take the wind on her starboard quarter, so they could interpose between the schooner, frigate, and the shore, maintaining the wind gauge advantage. The French ship eased her helm as well by at least a point, screening her weaker consort. The two warships were now on two sides of a triangle; one headed north and the other nor'east. If allowed to continue, they would meet about two miles west of the port of Basse Terre.
The schooner passed close ahead of her escort, then gybed to the opposite tack and began to reach sou'west away from the anchorage with the wind abeam. Moments later, the French man o'war came about as well, but instead of wearing down-wind, she threw herself up into the wind's eye for a tack. Since it slowed her down so much to do so, Desperate began to close her more rapidly.
"Helm up a point, quartermaster. Hands to the braces!" Treghues bawled. Desperate turned a bit more westerly of due north, taking the Trades more directly up the stern, a "landsman's breeze."
"She'll pass astern o' us; mebbe a mile, mile un a half off," Monk speculated, calculating speed and approach angles in his head after the Frenchman steadied on a course sou'sou'west to provide a mobile bulwark for the schooner.
"About two miles off now," Treghues commented, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Once astern, they could come about and try again, with us north of them and to leeward. They'd get into Basse Terre before we could beat south to interpose again."
He paced about at the windward rail, from the nettings overlooking the waist to the wheel and back, his fingers drumming on his ornately engraved and inlaid sword hilt.
"Hands wear ship, Mister Railsford! Gybe her and lay her on the same tack as yonder Frog. If we shall not have her information, I do not mean to allow her to pass that same information ashore for lack of effort on our part."
"Aye, sir!" Railsford shouted. "Stations for wearing ship! Main clewgarnets and buntlines, there, bosun!"
"Spanker brails, weather main cro'jack and lee cro'jack braces!" Alan cried at the afterguard men. "Haul taut!"
"Up mains'l and spanker!" Railsford went on with a brass speaking trumpet to his lips. "Clear away after bowlines, brace in the afteryards! Up helm!"
Desperate fell off the wind more, her stern crossing the eye of the wind slowly, for she was no longer generating her own apparent wind but sailing no faster than the Trades could blow.
"Clear away head bowlines! Lay the headyards square!" Railsford directed as the wind came directly astern, gauging the proper moment at which the foresails would no longer be blanketed by the courses and tops'ls. "Headsheets to starboard!"
"Main tack and sheet. Clear away, there. Spanker outhaul and clear away the brails," Alan added as the wind drew forward on the larboard quarter.
Within a breathless few minutes, Desperate was squared away on a new point of sail, paralleling the Frenchman to the sou'sou'west, and just slightly ahead of her by a quarter-mile.
"Smartly done, Mister Railsford." Treghues nodded in satisfaction at how professionally Desperate's crew did their sail drill.
"Thankee, sir." Railsford beamed. "Steady out bowlines! Haul taut weather trusses, braces and lifts! Clear away on deck!"
"He's shivering his mizzen tops'l, sir!" Alan pointed out as the French frigate tried to slow down, possibly so she could pass astern of Desperate and still get up to windward for Basse Terre,
"He's a game little cock, isn't he, Mister Railsford?" Treghues chuckled. "Once he gets an idea into his pate he won't give it up. Back the mizzen tops'l and haul in on the weather braces. Get the way off her."
Realizing that he could not dodge about Desperate, the Frenchman came up close to the wind and began to put on speed once more close-hauled, closing the range slightly. Oddly, Treghues let her approach to within three-quarters of a mile; just about the range of random shot, before ordering Desperate to haul in once more and maintain the distance.
"Pretty thing," Alan commented to Monk after a quick sharing of a telescope with the sailing master. The frigate had a dark brown oak hull, with a jaunty royal blue gunwale stripe picked out in yellow top and bottom, with much gilt trim about her bulwarks scroll-work and taffrail carvings of cherubs and dolphins and saints. Her figurehead could almost be discerned, a sword and shield-wielding maiden surmounted by a gilt fleur de lis crown.
"She's hard on the wind to close us, sir," Alan noted.
"Aye, but we'll draw ahead if she stays so," Monk growled.
There was a sudden puff of smoke from the Frenchman that blossomed on her far bow, then was blown away to a mist by the Trades. Seconds later, the sound of a shot could be heard, a thin thumping noise. She had fired one gun to leeward, the traditional challenge to combat. Evidently the French captain was so angered at being stymied by Desperate's maneuverings that he wanted to vent some round-shot spleen upon her.
Alan looked back at Treghues and saw the glint in his eyes. It would be galling to refuse combat, especially for a ship and captain under a cloud for previous actions, no matter how unfair the accusation was, and Alan could see Treghues' jaws working below the tan flesh of that narrow, patrician face.
No, he can't be thinking of it! Alan quailed. We can't fight a twenty-eight. We've done enough to clear our hawse already!
"Mister Gwynn, fire the leeward chase gun," Treghues said. "Brail up the main course, Mister Railsford. I think this stubborn Frog needs a lesson in manners. Mr. Peck, would you be so good as to assemble the band and have them give us something stirring?"
The starboard six-pounder banged, and the ship's boys with the drums and fifes met in the waist just below the quarterdeck rails and began a tinny rendition of "Heart of Oak," as the waisters and topmen took in the large main course and brailed it aloft on the main yard. The Marine complement paraded back and forth on the lee gangway by the bulwark and the hammock stowage, which would be their breast-works in the battle to come. A few of them who were better shots than others went aloft into the tops with their muskets and their swivel guns.
The Frenchman was closing fast, close enough to make out her open gunports. Alan groaned to himself when he saw that there were eleven of them. Two bow chase guns, six-pounders like Sedge thought, but only four quarterdeck guns, and eleven bloody twelve-pounders in each broadside battery, not ten! he noted with a sick feeling.
He wished he could squat down below the bulwarks of their own quarterdeck, for with her angle of heel, Desperated decks were bared just enough to make everyone aft a prime target.
The French ship fired, a solid broadside as all her guns lit off together, and his flesh quivered as the shot moaned in at them at twelve hundred feet per second. The range was just about five cables, half a nautical mile. Black shot droned overhead, slapping a hole in the spanker over where Lewrie stood. Fired on the up-roll, upward from a slanting deck, the lee ship had the advantage of range over Desperate. Alan's passion was artillery of all the skills he had been forced to learn in the Navy, and he knew Desperated nine-pounders could not be elevated high enough to reach as long as she was close-hauled and heeled over.
"Finish that verse and then get below," Treghues told his band, and the ship's boys scattered after a final tootle, to stow away their instruments and revert to their roles as powder monkeys who would fetch up the wooden or leather cylinders that held pre-measured charges from the magazines, or to assist the surgeon in the cockpit once the wounded worth saving were hauled below by older men.
"Ease her helm a point free, Mister Railsford, get the heel off her and we'll try our eye," Treghues snapped. "Stand by, Mister Gwynn!"
"Aye aye, sir!" the master gunner said in reply from the waist.
Desperate came more upright by a few feet, the bulwarks seeming to rise up like stage machinery, with the French frigate just slightly aft of abeam, and the range dropping to four cables.
"Quoins half-out!" Gwynn instructed his gun-captains. "Point yer guns! Ready!"
"I leave it to you, Mister Gwynn," Treghues said cheerfully.
"As you bear… fire!"
First the reloaded starboard chase gun, then the first of the long nine-pounders began to bark, the firing rippling down the ship's side one at a time as steady as a fired salute, with Gwynn pacing aft at the same pace as the ignitions. Shot erupted from the black iron muzzles in a rush of flame and sparks and thick clouds of spent powder, and bright beautiful feathers of spray leapt up close-aboard the enemy frigate's side as iron shot ricocheted to thud home below her gunports.
"Lovely shooting, Mister Gwynn!" Treghues commented. "Load with double-shot and hull him this time!"
Alan's legs were quivering with excitement, almost too tremulous to keep him erect as he stood by the wheel with the sailing master. In previous actions, he had been a midshipman on the gun deck, too busy supervising the loading, firing and running out, too intent on gunnery to think much about being afraid, about being maimed or killed, lost in the heat of the moment. But as a master's mate, his main role was to act as a sitting duck of no mean seniority on the bare quarterdeck, which would be the prime target of the French after they got within musket-shot.
Another broadside from the French, a positive avalanche of iron, and Desperate shrieked in oaken agony as things let go aloft. The mizzen royal and't'gallant yards were smashed by bar-shot or chain-shot, and the pieces rained down into the overhead nettings. A Marine and a top-man from the mizzen tops'l thumped onto the nettings like bloody steers, the Marine minus both legs at the crotch and spraying a scarlet shower on the deck.
"Firing high as usual," Treghues noted with a frown of disapproval. "When shall they learn?"
Desperate's guns were thundering once more, slamming four-inch, nine-pounder iron balls into the French ship, this time concentrated 'twixt wind and water, right into her hull. Planks were shattered and nibbles were taken out of her upper-works bulwarks, scattering the enemy Marines who had been gathered for a musket volley or two. But, being bigger and heavier enough to handle 22 twelve-pounder guns, it would take a lot of nibbling to do her damage, for her scantlings were thicker, her beams and cross-pieces were heavier and stronger.
"You've made your point, you damned fool," Alan grumbled aloud under the sound of the cannonading. "Now get a way on and get us out of here. Honor is redeemed and all that shit!"
But Treghues was in nautical Paradise, pacing back and forth in a maniacal joy, oblivious to the blood trails on the quarterdeck, or the hurt Desperate had suffered aloft.
"For what we're 'bout ta receive…" Monk whispered the old saw as the Frenchman's side lit up like red signal fuses seen through a thick fog, a fog of powder smoke that rolled down from Desperate to the foe. The smoke seemed to glow, and then the world was hammered into matchwood.
The starboard bulwark by the ladder leading below to the waist was flung into ruin, and a cloud of oak splinters flicked through the air like startled sparrows. Men were screaming like frightened horses, and Desperate staggered as heavy shot burst through her sides. The deck below Lewrie's feet jumped, almost throwing him to his knees.
"Eighteens if they's a pound!" Monk managed to say, grabbing onto the binnacle and traverse board table to stay erect.
"No more than twelve-pounders, surely, Mister Monk," Alan said in a shaky voice, trying to maintain that maddening sang froid demanded of a professional Sea Officer.
"Felt like eighteens, anyway," Monk spat.
As the smoke began to rag away, Alan could see that the enemy was now on a parallel course, just two cables off. She would not get closer; but then he realized, she didn't have to, for she could lay out there a fifth of a nautical mile away and shoot Desperate to lace unless they did something soon.
"Helm up, quartermaster!" Treghues yelled through the din as the guns belched fire again. "Bear down on her!"
Two loblolly boys stirred the savaged body of a petty officer by the torn-up starboard gangway. They shrugged and rolled the body to the hoie in the bulwarks aid tipped the corpse over the vide.
"That was Mister Weems!" Alan burst out in shock.
"Aye. poor bastard," Monk agreed. "There'll be an openin' fer a new bosun's mate tamorra."
A screaming waister was picked up on a carrying board and taken below to the cockpit surgery as they watched. There was nothing to be done with the dead or the hopelessly wounded but to get them out of sight and out from under foot. Words could be said later from the prayer book.
More shot screamed in, and Desperate reeled with its impact. More screams from the waist, a puff of smoke from the nettings that set hammocks writhing like a box of worms as a round-shot scattered them. A Marine keened and fell from the gangway clutching his belly. Dull flames licked around the torn canvas from a small explosion, and men from the larboard side rushed to pour water on the fire before it could take hold and eat their ship.
One cable's range now; two hundred yards. Alan went forward to the quarterdeck rail to look down into the waist. A larboard gun had been overturned and its crew decimated. As he watched, the loblolly boys dragged another screaming unfortunate to the midships hatch, a man as quilled with jagged wood splinters as a hedge-hog. The dead Marine was being passed out a larboard gunport and someone was retching bile as he used a powder scoop to shovel up the man's spilled intestines. The gun crews labored away with their scarves around their ears to save their hearing, intent on their artillery. Burney, up by the fo'c'sle, and Avery in the waist, were pacing among their men, shoving them to their places and speeding them along. Then the guns were barking and recoiling back against their breeching ropes, hot enough now to leap from the deck instead of rolling backwards on their small trucks.
Another broadside from the French, and this one felt like an earthquake. Alan clung to the hammock-nettings as the ship felt as if she had been slammed to a halt. Something whined past his head, and the hammocks before him punched him in the crotch. He looked down as he was bent over by the pain and saw a chunk of the bulwark, nearly three inches across and a foot long, sticking from the far side of the barrier.
"Bloody Christ!" he yelped, feeling his crotch in fear he had been de-bollocked, and was relieved to feel that his "wedding-tackle" was still.there. The deck continued to tremble with each strike and there was a lot of screaming from back aft as he winced with his pain.
"Lewrie, stir yourself!" Treghues bellowed, pointing behind him to the wheel, where men lay torn and bleeding.
Alan limped aft, bent over. Mr. Monk was propped up by the binnacle with Sedge bending down over him. The rotund sailing master had been struck in the leg with a grape-shot ball, a full ounce of lead that had almost ripped his limb off above the knee, and was now hanging by a few tattered sinews. Sedge was seizing a piece of small-stuff about the upper thigh to staunch the copious spurting of blood, and Lewrie knelt to aid him.
"Sedge, ya've more experience, do ya take charge," Monk gasped from a pasty white face sheened with shock-sweat.
"Aye, I shall, Mister Monk," Sedge promised as the surgeon's assistants rushed to his side with a carrying board.
"At least Dorne won't have ta saw much to take this bugger," Monk tried to jest, too freshly wounded to feel much pain yet. The loblolly boys rolled him onto the board, strapped him down, and made off with him by the larboard ladder, and Monk began to moan as the pain hit him. "Hurry me below, damn yer blood!" he cried out.
"Spare quartermaster to the wheel," Sedge barked. "Hot work, ain't it, Lewrie?"
"God's teeth, yes!" Alan concurred.
Sedge laughed and strode away to assist Toliver the bosun's mate in ordering the afterguard into shape once more, leaving Lewrie by the wheel with two new white-eyed quartermasters who flinched every time something whined nearby, their feet slipping in the blood trails of their predecessors.
"Watch your helm," Alan told them, being careful to station himself to windward, using them and the wheel drum as a shield.
The guns were now firing as fast as the frightened and weary crews could load and run out, all order lost in the maelstrom of battle. Every few seconds there was discharge, followed by one from their foe. Lieutenant Peck and his Marines were now firing by squads from the rail, and the masts of the French frigate were towering alongside, nearly as high as Desperated own; less than half a cable off, perhaps sixty yards and adequate musket-shot. To confirm it, a volley of balls hit the quarterdeck, one warbling off the rim of the compass bowl, another raising a large splinter from the deck before Alan's feet.
Desperate reeled again like a gut-punched boxer.
"Mister Lewrie, come here!" Railsford yelled through a speaking trumpet. "Go forrud into the waist and take charge!"
"Aye, sir?" Alan said, dashing to his side.
"Gwynn is down!" Railsford snarled, shoving him to the larboard ladder. "Go, no time to chat about it! Keep the guns firing!"
Alan hammered down the ladder to the waist. The master gunner Mr. Gwynn was stretched out on the deck to larboard, his shirt and waist-coat sodden with blood, and flecks of bloody spume on his lips as he tried to breathe.
"God save me!" Alan whispered, then mastered himself. "Avery?"
"Aye, sir?" a white-faced David Avery asked, trotting aft.
"I'll take charge. Go aft and tend the gunners there. Is Burney still alive?"
"Aye, sir."
"Good. Quarter-gunners!" Alan bawled, glad to have something concrete to do. "Pace your damned gun-captains! Ordered firing!"
Alan watched as the senior quarter-gunners passed among their charges and stilled their individual efforts, making them work in unison once more, loading and touching off together. He bent down to peer out a gunport at the enemy.
"Direct these guns at the same aiming point, here! Base of the main-mast is your target. Punch a hole clean through her! Burney, do you aim at the base of their foremast!"
"Wait for it, ya stupid get!"
"Prime your guns… point your guns… on the up-roll… fire!"
Three at a time, the guns barked and leaped backwards, first Burney's charges, then Alan's, then the guns below the quarter-deck in the cabins aft.
"Better," Alan snapped. He strode aft to look at the hands as they swabbed out and began to load. Gwynn gave a mournful groan as one of the men did him the merciful favor of smacking him on the head with a heavy mallet to knock him unconscious. He was too badly hurt to live, and the surgeons could do nothing with such a savage chest wound. Out cold and knowing nothing of the indignity, he was passed out through a larboard gunport where he splashed into the sea to drown quickly.
More French iron hammered into them, and Alan fell to the deck as a rammer man staggered into him. A covey of splinters took flight like passing quail over his head, and his head rang with the shock wave of a concussion somewhere. The rammer man was sprawled across his lap with his back flayed open to the spine, and Alan gave it a long thought before shoving him off and getting back to his feet. Damned if it had not felt rather safe flat on his back, out of the line of fire.
"Spare man from the larboard battery here," Alan directed, and a rabbity man darted forward to scoop up the discarded rammer and take his place in the starboard battery.
One of the new midshipmen, the youngest and stupidest, tugged at his coat tails, and he turned to look down at the child.
"Mister Railsford says prepare the larboard battery as we're… we're…" The boy fumbled, his teeth chattering in fear.
"We're ready to what, damn your thin blood!" Alan barked like an exasperated commission officer. It felt damned good to yell at the boy instead of musing on his own quaking.
"We're to come about and rake her, sir," the boy finished.
"Larboard quarter-gunners, to me!" When they had gathered round he told them to ready their pieces, double-shotted with grape for good measure.
"We'm short, sir," a grizzled older man told him.
"Then fetch the hands from the starboard chase gun," Alan told him. "That six-pounder is only making them sneeze. Run out as you are ready and get those ports open now. Starboard battery, load and stand by for broadsides!"
"'Ware below!"
"Oh, Jesus!" Someone cringed as the repaired main yard came down with a crash across the cross-deck beams where the boats usually nestled.
"So much fer fixin' that fucker," a quarter-gunner spat, drooling tobacco juice from a massive wad in his cheek.
With a loud creak, the mizzen tops'l was thrown aback to slow their ship down. Alan bent down to peer out a gunport and saw that the Frogs were drawing ahead rapidly.
"On the up-roll… fire!"
At such close range, even their light nine-pounder shot could do harm to a frigate with heavier scantlings, and the broadside brought a groan of racked timber from the French ship as she was struck hard. Nettings and bulwarks flew, and screams sounded from French throats this time. Alan could feel when Desperated helm was put hard up to windward, even without looking at the waisters on the riddled gangways as they flung themselves on the braces to wear ship.
"Take your time and reload the starboard guns! Sponge out your guns! Overhaul that tackle there, or you'll get mashed like a pasty," Alan called. "Mister Burney, do you take charge of readying the battery. Larboard guns, stand by."
The ship swayed like a drunkard as she wore down-wind, and the yards and masts of the French ship swung across the bow, with the tip of Desperate's bow-sprit barely clearing her mizzen shrouds and taffrail lanterns.
"We may only get one chance at this, so make your shots count," Alan warned his larboard gunners. "Don't aim too high and blow holes in her quarterdeck. Let's put round-shot and grape down the full length of her gun deck, just like a good game of bowls. Tear her stern out, shake her mizzen to shreds."
Willing or not, Alan had to climb up onto the larboard gangway to judge the best moment, his hanger tangling between his shins. They would pass the Frenchman's stern at close pistol-shot.
Damme if we might win this yet! Alan thought as he drew his lovely gift hanger and let the pristine blade flash silver in the sun.
"Ready… as you bear… Fire!"
The larboard chase gun went off and its load of double-shot and grape gouged the taffrail open, shattering the carved cherubs, dolphins and saints into gilt tatters, strewing six French naval infantry down like corn-stalks. Then the nine-pounders began to discharge, and the stern windows, the larboard quarter-gallery and the transom were riddled in a flurry of broken planking. The rudder twitched back and forth and the mizzen mast shivered as it was struck. Screams from the French ship could be heard as her gun crews were mown down by the shot passing down the length of her decks.
"That's the way, Desperates!" Alan howled in triumph, waving his sword over his head in derision at the French he could see on the poop and quarterdeck. Swivels barked from the tops and the Marine sharpshooters let fly. Peck and his squads formed up to larboard and began to volley into her. "Sponge out! Overhaul your tackle! Charge guns!"
Desperate put her helm down and began to swing back onto the wind to rake the Frenchman's stern with the other battery, but the frigate, bearing the name Capricieuse on her torn gilt stern-placque tried to bear up as well, blocking their way.
"Avast!" Railsford screamed. "Helm hard up! Lewrie, ready to rake her again with the larboard battery!"
Quicker to return to her original course, Desperate wavered, then got herself under control. Capricieuse tried to sag down off the wind with her, but Desperate was already to leeward. The angle was acute, but it would be a stern rake, right up through the shattered wood, at least into her after batteries.
"Wait for the transom, wait for the transom!" Alan screamed in glee as he capered up and down the gangway, looking down on his gun crews. Sweating men hauled on tackles to heave the heavy guns up the slightly canted deck. Priming quills were inserted. Crows and levers were shouldered and muscles strained near to rupture to shift the aim of the barrels. Fists were raised in the air as gun-captains signaled their readiness. A few shots were fired by the French from their own larboard side before Desperate passed out of their gun-arcs.
"As you bear… fire!"
One at a time, the guns roared out their challenge, and spat their tongues of flame through the smoke. Wood on the larboard quarter was chewed up. The rudder twitched again as a ball smacked into the transom post. The mizzen swayed and jerked, and Alan could see one ball carom off an interior beam with a puff of smoke and dust and paint to go ricocheting down the length of the gun deck. The after guns belched fire, then Desperate was staggered once more as though she had just been struck hard herself, but Alan could not see one French gun that could bear to do that damage.
Capricieuse sagged down off the wind, fully presenting her stern to Desperate, trying to bring her unused starboard battery into action, and there was no movement from aft to shift their ship's course. Alan scrambled back down to the gun deck off the gangway, where it would be safer to suffer what they were about to get in retribution.
"Got a gun burst aft, sir!" a runner told him. "One o' them brass nines. Blew a hole right up through the deckhead!"
"Tell Avery to deal with it." Alan shrugged, intent on his men. "Load with double-shot! Run out!"
"Tha's just it, sir, Mister Avery's bad hurt, an' the quarter-gunner's dead," the man told him.
"Oh, shit. Hogan, leave the chase gun and go aft. You're a quarter-gunner now!" Alan chilled. He grabbed Hogan as he trotted by and held him close for a moment. "Avery's been hurt. Get word to me on how he is."
"Aye, I'll do that, sir."
"Ports is openin'!" someone warned.
"Gun crews, lay down!" Alan yelped. If they were struck while the men were still on their feet, it would be a slaughter. A second later, the broadside from the fresh battery struck them, and wood and iron howled in agony and the deck shuddered beneath them. Alan stuck his head up and looked around, coughing on smoke and engrained dust.
"Up and at 'em, Desperates, come on, larboard!" he called, rising. "Prime your guns! Point! On the up-roll… fire!"
A ragged cheer arose as the tortured mizzen-mast of the French frigate gave a final shudder and toppled forward, chopped to flinders below the deck by those stern rakes. It fell into component pieces, top-mast dropping straight down as the lower mast fell forward, and the t'gallant and royal masts and spars spiraled about to drape themselves over the main topmast, dragging it sideways in a tangle of rope and canvas.
"Damme, will you look at that!" Alan hooted. "Just bloody beautiful! Keep it up, lads, and we'll have the bastard!"
The aged carpenter came scrambling up from below decks past the parade of powder monkeys, shoving them out of the way in his haste to get to the quarterdeck, and Alan noted that "Chips" was soaking wet from mid-thigh down, which made him suddenly wonder if Desperate would stay afloat long enough to actually "have the bastard," or whether the bastard, damaged as the French frigate was, would end up having them!
The youngest midshipman was back suddenly, tugging on Alan's coat once more, his face streaked with soot and powder stains, the tracks of tears carved into the grime.
"Please, Mister Lewrie, sir, the captain presents his respects, and requests could you spare half a dozen hands to assist the carpenter."
"Hulled and leaking, are we?" Alan asked close, so the hands would not hear.
"Sinking, sir!" The boy quailed, but soft enough for discretion.
"God's balls," Alan breathed. "What next, I wonder? Maple?"
"Aye, sir," the fo'c'sle gunner answered, breaking free of the larboard battery.
"Select five hands who aren't doing us much good at the moment and assist the ship's carpenter, if you would be so kind," Alan directed, trying to remain calm, but it didn't fool Maple, who rolled his eyes in alarm and glanced upward at the cross-deck beams where the boats most definitely weren't any longer. Other than flotsam from a wreck, the boats were the only life-saving devices available.
"Oh, shit, Mister Lewrie, sir!" Maple sighed, dashing off.
If I'd stayed in London, I'd have become a wealthy pimp by now, Alan speculated sourly. I can't even bloody swim!
There was a volley of musketry of such volume and intensity that only a company of infantry could have made it. A larboard waister came tumbling down from the forebraces to sprawl across the breech of a gun, his face shot away and his brains oozing and sizzling on the hot metal.
Alan ducked to look out a gunport once more. Capricieuse was close-aboard, not fifty yards off, her bulwarks lined with men as though her last chance was to board Desperate and take her in a hot hand-to-hand action.
"Quoins out!" Alan yelled to his gunners. "Load grape and canister atop ball! Cease fire and stand by for a broadside!"
"Double-shotted, zurr!" a gun-captain called back.
"Worm 'em out of there and reduce your powder charges! I'll not have another burst barrel!"
"Got grape, but no canister!" another shouted.
"Fuck it! Shoot out your loads!" Alan thundered, at the same time grabbing the nearest powder monkey on his way below with an empty leather cylinder. "Tell Mister Tulley in the magazine I need grape and canister and reduced charges. I'm going to triple-shot the guns!"