"A clever way to close the range quickly," Lt. Westcott mused.
"No, sirs… not clever at all!" Lewrie suddenly whooped, all but startling his First Officer and Sailing Master. "A new signal for Modeste, Mister Grainger… 'Submit… New Course… West by North. Enemy Is Lasking on Larboard Tack'!"
"Aye, sir!" Grainger replied, hustling back to his duties by the flag lockers, perplexed by the term.
"He should've changed course no more than two points, in line-of-succession, not all at once," Lewrie pointed out. "That would've placed him cross our bows, but no… he had 'em all wheel as one and wear to larboard tack. We turn more Westerly, he'll barge up to us with all of our guns directed at the nearest frigate, and the two-decker's fire is masked… as is the trailin' frigate's!
"They stay as they are and think t'sail down our starboard beam for broadsides on opposin' tacks, they're stacked on top of each other, 'less the followin' ships luff up in order t'fall in trail of the lead ship!" Lewrie urgently explained, arms swinging and his hands clapping before him, almost skipping about the deck in glee.
"And, do they come back to their original course, they'll end up bows-on to our line, and under raking fire from all four of ours!" Lt. Westcott quickly grasped. "Just too clever by half, the poor bastard."
"Now, let's all pray Captain Blanding sees what we see," Lewrie replied, turning to peer intently at Modeste's signals halliards. "The troop ship might escape us whilst we're engaged with these three, but I s'pose it can't be helped. Better for us, had Cockerel or Pylades led our line."
If Captain Blanding sent one of his lighter 32-gunned frigates off in chase that instant, from the rear of their line, it would take hours for one of them to fetch the two-decker transport into even long gun-range… perhaps only a few miles off Pass a La Loutre, or have to chase her right up to Fort Balise and the Head of Passes in what, at the moment, was still officially Spanish territory!
"Signal, sir!" Midshipman Grainger crisply reported. '"Form Line of Battle… Course West by North… With All Despatch'!"
"We've got 'em, Mister Westcott!" Lewrie exulted with a growl. "By God, we've got em!"
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
They're coming back to line-ahead, sir!" Midshipman Rossyngton shouted down from the main-mast royal yard, a perch even more precarious than the cross-trees.
"Thankee, Mister Rossyngton!" Lewrie shouted back. "Now come to the deck and take your station at Quarters! Hellish-odd," he said in a much softer voice to Westcott as he lifted his glass to peer out for a sign of the foe. "They see our mast-trucks and commissioning pendants, we see theirs, and all else is damn-all squiffy."
"Aha, sir!" Lt. Westcott said, pointing with his telescope. "I can just make out the lead frigate… there, sir! She'll be directly bows-on to us, square on our starboard beam, does she not alter course!"
Lewrie swivelled, found a ghostly bow sprit and jib-boom, about a mile to windward; found jibs and a foretopmast stays'l, then the tan-in-white square shapes of the leading frigate's forecourse and fore topsail. "To windward of us… now they're silhouetted 'gainst the dawn, the damned fools. French!" he sniffed. "They just can't keep it simple. All that elegant jeune йcole bumf they came up with two wars ago, back in the Seventeen Sixties. What odds'd ye give me, Mister Westcott, do they load with star-shot and chain-shot, and try t'dismast us, as their doctrine demands?"
"I doubt they'll have time to turn a whole battery upon us for that practise, sir," Lt. Westcott replied. He was smiling, not one of his brief, tooth-baring flash-grins, but a gladsome, widespread mouth. "There's her main-mast, a hint of her mizen, and… "
Lewrie looked up at the commissioning pendant; their line was on starboard tack, with the light winds from the Nor'east by East, and the French, after their last manoeuvre into line-ahead formation, were now sailing with those winds fine on their larboard quarters.
"And there's their seventy-four, just emerging astern of her," Westcott added as the ponderous behemoth loomed up more solid from the mists, about a cable astern of the frigate.
"Stand by, Mister Spendlove!" Lewrie alerted the Second Officer, in charge of the main guns in the waist. "You will make sure that all pieces fire as they bear, and bow-rake her!"
"Not quite yet… not quite…," Lt. Westcott was muttering to himself, flexing his knees to ride the easy scend and roll of the ship as he peered intently at the lead ship, judging the range.
"Here it comes," Lewrie said with a grunt as the Frenchman's two chase guns exploded from her forecastle at last. Those projectiles did not sound like round-shot; there was a whole, thin chorus of light shot that went soaring high above the decks; expanding bar-shot, chain-shot, and star-shot. "Should've laid a wager, Mister Westcott," he said with another pleased grunt as sails aloft were pierced, a few lines parted, and some splinters were torn from the top-masts.
"I make the range a bit over a quarter-mile, sir," Lt. Westcott informed him.
"Good enough for me, sir," Lewrie told him, then lifted a brass speaking-trumpet. "Mister Spendlove! As you bear, you may open upon her!"
"Aye aye, sir! As you bear! Fire!" Spendlove shouted.
As if paced by a metronome atop a parlour piano forte, the guns began to bellow, from the 12-pounder chase gun forrud, then down the long battery of fourteen 18-pounders, gushing great clouds of powder smoke and amber sparks that merged into a single thunderhead along the starboard side, then lingered and was blown back into the gunners' faces by the light winds, and only slowly thinned and trailed away to the un-engaged larboard side, blotting away their view of the foe for a long minute or so. Aft, HMS Modeste began her first broadside, as well, a greater, louder roaring from her heavier 18-pounders and 24-pounders, spewing out an even denser cloud of spent powder smoke.
"Deck, there!" a lookout high aloft, above the mists and powder smoke, shouted. "'Er foremast's by th' board! Sprit an' boom timbers be shot away!"
Lewrie had a dimmer view from the quarterdeck; even so, he could make out the French frigate's foremast crashing down in ruin, the light royal and t'gallant top-masts above her cross-trees collapsing zig-zag, and yards and sails swirling like a broken kite. The stouter timber of the mast above the foremast's fighting top was leaning forward like a new-felled tree, to drape over her forecastle, roundhouse, beakheads, and the shattered jib-boom and bow sprit!
"Bow-raked for certain, by God, sir!" Lt. Westcott was enthusing. Reliant's guns, or Modeste's heavier ones, no matter; the curved plankings of any ship's bluff bows were not as stout as a ship's sides, with their heavy, closer-spaced frames and thicker scantling. Bows, like the delicate squared-off stern transoms, could be holed, and when they were, the round-shot, all that broken lumber, and clouds of whirling, jagged wood splinters got funnelled down the length of the gun-deck, shattering deck planking, overhead beams, frame timbers, and dis-mounting massive guns, turning truck-carriages into more splinters, snapping the carline support posts… and slaughtering enemy sailors by the dozens!
"Lamb t'the slaughter, Mister Westcott," Lewrie growled, utterly delighted with the mental image of that murderous chaos, the terror, dismemberments, and wounds they had just inflicted yonder. "I don't see why their flag officer's comin' at us this way, but… more fool, him! Mister Spendlove… serve her another! Skin the bastards!"