“Last cast of the log?” Lewrie asked.
“Just under eight knots, sir,” Westcott reported.
“Let’s run up the main top-mast, middle, and main t’gallant stays’ls,” Lewrie ordered of a sudden. “Do we have to wheel round at short notice, we’ll need that extra canvas aloft.”
“Aye, sir,” Westcott said, raising his brass speaking-trumpet to bellow the order forward.
“Mister Simcock?” Lewrie called to the Marine officer, who was idly pacing the starboard sail-tending gangway behind his men posted at the bulwarks and hammock stanchions. “That Don yonder still thinks we’re a merchantman, so it’d be best were your Marines not visible to him ’til the last moment. Have ’em squat down, if you will.”
“Squat, sir?” Simcock asked, aghast.
“You, too, sir! Kneel, or hunch … or, as the Yankee Doodles say, hunker down, ’til we spring our surprise,” Lewrie ordered with a laugh. “Your men in the fighting tops should lie down out of sight, as well. I don’t wish your splendid red coats t’give ’em the squits!”
The gun crews and powder monkeys, who had been sitting or standing idle, and the portion of the crew assigned at Quarters to tend to the braces, sheets, and fighting tops and yards, had themselves a good, tension-relieving laugh at the “lobster back’s” expense.
“We’re closing rather fast, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported to him. “About three miles off now, she is. Both of us making the same rate of knots. The next ten minutes will tell.”
“I expect you’re right,” Lewrie said, nodding soberly. “He is either still gulled, or he’s recognised us for a frigate and doesn’t give a damn. Either way, it’s of no matter.”
He raised his telescope again to study the Spanish frigate, to try to count gun-ports down her starboard side. Closer to, she gave the impression that she had been at sea longer than most. That pale yellow hull stripe was bleached by sun and time to almost white, but her gun-ports were still closed, and the same outer colour as the hull stripe.
Lewrie crossed to the helm, and stowed his telescope away; it was no longer necessary. The Spaniard was close enough to trust his own eyes. He paced back to the weather side of the quarterdeck, and planted his feet, clasped his hands in the small of his back to seem stoic and confident, and waited.
One mile of separation, and the Spaniard began to brail up his main course against the risk of catching fire from the discharges from his own guns.
Half a mile between them, and it appeared that both warships would pass each other, starboard-to-starboard, at about two or three hundred yards’ distance. Lewrie looked to his guns, drawn up to the port sills and ready to be run out as soon as the gun-ports opened, their elevating quoins drawn back from underneath the breeches for a high angle. Could they elevate high enough to savage the Spaniard’s sails and cripple her?
“A point free, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said, his mouth as dry as dust, of a sudden.
“Point free, aye, sir.”
“Just before we open upon her…,” Lewrie further said, having a last-minute inspiration, “haul in the lee braces and flat the sails to the wind. That’ll lay us over t’loo’rd a few degrees more.”
“Aye, sir,” Westcott replied, sounding mystified.
“Once the last gun fires, ease ’em again.”
“Ah! I see. Aye, sir!” Lt. Westcott answered.
A quarter-mile apart, and the Spanish frigate at last began to swing up her gun-ports. Lewrie counted twelve of them down her starboard side, rapidly calculating. Twenty-four great-guns on her main deck, two bow chasers, perhaps two stern chasers, and at least six lesser guns on her quarterdeck … She’s a thirty-four? he thought.
“Mister Spendlove!” Lewrie roared to Reliant’s waist. “Open yer ports and run out! Stand by to fire as you bear, at the highest elevation! Mister Simcock? You can stand up, now!”
She won’t wheel cross our bows, not now, she’s left it too late! Lewrie thought; And, the Dons don’t have carronades!
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“We will be haulin’ our wind, as soon as the last gun is fired, Mister Spendlove!” Lewrie cautioned. “Serve the larboard battery, and have spare hands re-load the starboard guns with solid shot!”
“Aye, sir!” Spendlove shouted back, and Lt. Merriman raised his hat in sign that he had also heard the order and would comply.
“It looks like we’ll pass within a cable’s range, sir,” Lt. Westcott pointed out, his voice gruff. “Perhaps less than two hundred yards. Any moment, now.”
“Stand ready!” Lewrie shouted to his gun crews, and the brace-tenders on the gangways.
He’s a proper little Spaniard, at least. He’ll do things the honourable way, Lewrie thought; Religious, too!
That false British flag the enemy frigate had flown was struck down, and the horizontally-striped red-gold-red flag of Spain with the royal coat of arms in the centre of the middle gold stripe was soaring up in its place. At the same time, a large wooden crucifix was being hauled up to rest against the front face of the frigate’s fore course.
“Haul taut, the lee braces, Mister Westcott,” he barked.
“Haul taut, lee braces … ease weather braces!” Lt. Westcott yelled forward with a speaking-trumpet. and the yardarms of all three masts, linked together on each mast, were swung more fore-and-aft to point their larboard tips toward the larboard stern quarter, flattening the courses, tops’ls, and t’gallants against the wind. The deck heeled over to leeward, only a few degrees, but …
Maybe just enough! Lewrie thought.
“As you bear … Fire!” he roared, and the world exploded.
The 12-pounder bow chaser barked, then the 18-pounders down the starboard side went off with louder roars, each about a second after the first, thundering back from the gun-ports with their carriage trucks squealing, followed mere seconds later by the deep booms from the 32-pounder carronades and the sharper cracks from the quarterdeck 9-pounders, amid an instant bank of sour-reeking powder smoke, almost so thick that it was hard to make out the bulwark next to him. The frigate juddered and trembled under his feet, not just to the recoil of her own guns, but to the slamming impacts of Spanish roundshot in reply. Reliant was punctured! He could hear the scream of wood!
“Wear, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie yelled, finally spotting his First Lieutenant as the clouds of powder smoke thinned a bit.
“Hard up your helm!” Westcott told the helmsmen. “Stations to wear ship! Ease lee braces, haul taut weather braces, and get some drive back on her as we fall off!”
Lewrie looked out-board for the Spanish frigate, but she, too, was all but invisible in her own drifting cloud of spent powder, and that was wafting down-wind toward Reliant. At least he could see his own decks, noting that Spendlove had shifted the bulk of his gunners to larboard, leaving a few men from each gun under Lt. Merriman to see to re-loading the starboard battery. A stream of ship’s boys dashed past Lewrie, bearing the fire-proof leather cartridge cylinders to feed the muzzles of the quarterdeck guns. Jessop was among them, saddled as a “new-come” with the heavier charge for a 32-pounder carronade, his feet bare for greater traction on the sanded decks and ladderways, and a neckerchief bound over his ears to save his hearing. He gave Lewrie a brief grin as he whisked by.
Reliant was coming round, pointing her stern to the smoke bank from her own guns, and the Spaniard’s, the wooden balls strung together in the parrels crying out as the yards were swung round. With a loud whoosh, the spanker over the quarterdeck swung over to starboard as the frigate completed her wear.
“Starboard battery re-loaded and ready, sir!” Lt. Merriman reported from the waist. “Spare hands, tail onto the run-out tackle for the larboard guns!”
“Prime your guns!” Spendlove insisted. “Open the ports, and run out!”