“Someone see Bisquit below,” Lewrie asked. “Mister Carey?”
“Aye, sir,” the lad replied, sounding disappointed to miss the opening broadside.
“Hurry back,” Lewrie bade him as the Midshipman took hold of the dog’s collar and led him down to the orlop.
“Half a mile’s range, I make it, sir,” Mr. Yelland said after taking a sight with his sextant and some scribbling on a slate with a stub of chalk.
“And just about beam-on,” Lewrie agreed. “Mister Westcott, open the gun-ports and run out! Pass word for them to aim well.”
“Aye, sir!” Lt. Westcott said, then bellowed orders and sent Midshipmen scampering down to pass the word. Word came back, shouts of “Ready!”
In Lewrie’s ocular, he could see French soldiers looking back at Sapphire, mostly curious and unaware, so far; sweaty, dusty faces, mustachios and beards, heads turning to look seaward, then back, to speculate with their mates, as Sapphire rumbled and screeched as the guns were run out.
“Mon Dieu, merde alors, mort de ma vie—” Lewrie tittered with mockery of imagined French expressions of sudden alarm.
“Lower deck, by broadside … fire!” Westcott roared.
The discharge of all eleven 24-pounders shoved Sapphire a foot or two to larboard, and made her feel as if she squatted in the sea. A massive cloud of spent powder smoke jutted shoreward, spiked with reddish-amber jets of flame and swirling wee embers of serge cartridge bag remnants.
“Let the smoke clear a little!” Lewrie called out.
“Now, sir? I can see the shore again,” Westcott urged.
“Now, sir. Serve ’em another,” Lewrie agreed.
“Upper deck, by broadside … fire!”
Mr. Deacon had a short pocket telescope of his own to one eye and was gloating. “I can see horses and riders down, the head of the first battalion’s colour party down … Damn the smoke!”
“A glass, somebody!” Hughes demanded. “The bloody Dons stole mine!”
“Smoke’s clearing, sir!” Westcott pointed out.
“Fire away, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie told him.
“Weather deck guns, by broadside … fire!” and the 6-pounders crashed out, their discharges lighter and shriller than the others. Fewer in number, and their smoke dispersed quicker, giving everyone on deck a good view of what they had wrought, and it was devastation.
“Goddamned good shooting!” Lewrie cried. “Have we the best gunners in the Fleet, or not? Pour it on, Mister Westcott, skin the bastards!”
The leading regiment in the long, snaking column had sported a few flags, the Tricolour national emblem topped by a large silver bird of some kind, and company flags used as rally points. There was no sign of them, now, except for a few of the lesser ensigns being rushed back West. French soldiers were simply mown down in windrows and heaps of dead and broken wounded, and the rest were fleeing.
“Hah!” Lewrie laughed, turning to Deacon. “How many miles per hour can French regiments run, Mister Deacon?”
“Lower gun-deck, by broadside … fire!”
The massive 24-pounders belched smoke and fire, flinging solid shot and clouds of plum-sized grapeshot right into the heart of the fleeing mass of soldiers, scything down dozens more. The second regiment in line was engulfed by the frantic stampede, bringing it to a panicky halt.
“Upper-deck guns, by broadside … fire!”
That avalanche of iron struck all along the length of that seething mass of soldiery, and, when the smoke cleared, all three of the French regiments were in flight back to Almuñécar, over-running the artillery pieces and ammunition caissons, the panic making the horse teams rear and scream.
“Six-pounders, by broadside … fire!” Lt. Westcott screeched, and dozens of Frenchmen were tossed aside like lead toys. There were some cleverer soldiers who abandoned their packs, hangers, cartridge pouches, and muskets and were scrambling frantically up the hills that forced the coast road so close to the sea, sure that shipboard guns could not elevate that high. The rest were running, stumbling, shoving slower compatriots out of their way, trampling over the fallen in their haste to find some safety, and leaving wounded friends to their own devices.
“Do my eyes deceive me?” Major Hughes shouted, pointing with one arm as he held a borrowed telescope to his eye. “They’re un-limbering their artillery, the damned fools!”
“Brave fellows,” Lt. Westcott commented, his voice raspy from shouting orders.
“Damned idiots!” Mr. Deacon spat.
“What might they have, Mister Deacon?” Lewrie asked. “You’re my expert on military matters.”
“I’d think that they have six or eight twelve-pounders, Napoleon’s favourites,” Deacon surmised, “and at least a pair of howitzers.”
“No bursting shot? No shrapnel ‘specials’?” Lewrie pressed.
“The latest intelligence in our possession says not,” Deacon assured him.
“Lower-deck guns, by broadside … fire!” Westcott yelled, and the horrid scene was blotted out by a thick fog of powder smoke. As it cleared, Lewrie could see fresh heaps of bodies, round which the lucky survivors fled on.
“Pass word below to target the French artillery, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered. “We can’t allow them a single point of pride.”
“Aye, sir. Mister Fywell, pass word to the gunners to target the French guns,” Westcott said, sending the Midshipman dashing off.
“God, it’s wondrous, sir!” Midshipman Carey, who had taken the dog to the orlop, marvelled. “Horrible, but wondrous all at the same time.”
“Soldiers just can’t fathom a ship’s firepower,” Lewrie took time to tell him. “Our twenty-four-pounders are the equivalent of an army’s entire siege train, only used to knock down fortress walls. They can’t imagine them turned on them! Why, one of Napoleon’s armies fields only half our number of barrels.”
“Ooh, look at the pretty ship,” Deacon quipped, “so harmless, and—ack!”
“How’s Bisquit?” Lewrie asked.
“Curled up and shivering in Pettus’s lap, sir,” Carey replied. “And Mister Tanner’s much the same, between three kegs of salt-meat.”
Tanner, the Ship’s Cook, a veteran Greenwich Pensioner with a leg missing, had no role at Quarters, and was allowed to hide below.
“Shivering?” Lewrie scoffed.
“It’s hard to say which whines louder, sir,” Carey said with an impish grin.
“Upper gun-deck, by broadside … fire!”
The French guns had been detached from their limbers and caissons, the horse teams had been led behind, and men were hastily ramming bagged powder and shot down the muzzles. Officers and gun-captains were bending over their crude sights, adjusting the elevation screws, and gunners were lifting the trails of the carriages to adjust their traverses. They were just about to step back and apply their burning linstocks to the touch holes when Sapphire’s eleven 12-pounders lit off at the top of the up-roll, when the ship poised steadiest. When the smoke thinned and wafted alee, half the battery was wrecked, the barrels knocked off their carriages, wheels smashed and carriages lying at odd angles. Several team horses were down, and many of the others were screaming, kicking, and dashing off among the panicked French soldiers who had been streaming West behind the guns.
“Six-pounders, by broadside … fire!”
That finished the horrid work, slaying dazed gunners, dis-mounting or disabling the rest. A lucky hit on a powder caisson caused a great explosion and a massive yellow-white blossom of powder smoke. Burning embers of the waggon landed on the others, setting them on fire, and the gun battery’s powder supply and all its limbers and caissons were destroyed. Even if the gun barrels could be salvaged and carted away later, the French would have to force some Spanish arsenal and its unwilling artificers to build new ones before those guns could be used again.