“Very well. Hands to sheets and braces, and make her head Due East,” Lewrie ordered, and the Bosuns’ calls piped the order, along with loud bawls from Bosun Terrell and his Mates, Nobbs and Plunkett. The helm was put over, and Ceuta swam from being obscured by the fore course and jibs to appear ahead of the bows off the starboard side.
A long five minutes passed as Sapphire surged along at seven knots, three miles off from the fortress, with nothing happening.
“What, are they asleep?” Lt. Westcott japed, eager for something to happen, even if it would be dire.
“Wish I’d thought t’fetch Mountjoy’s astronomical telescope,” Lewrie said, lowering his day-glass in frustration. “I can make out troops on the parapets, sure enough, but evidently they’re not tempted yet. Mister Yelland? Alter course and close to two miles’ range, if you please, then bring her back to Due East.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
Once more, Sapphire swung shoreward, gathering a little speed as she took the winds more on her larboard quarters, then swung back East. “Two miles, sir!” Yelland reported from the quarterdeck below Lewrie’s position.
“Very well, carry on,” Lewrie called back, sensing his ship’s loss of speed as she took the winds more abeam. He was still getting used to plodding, after years in sloops of war and swift frigates, and Sapphire, like all her sister Fourth Rates, definitely plodded!
“Gunfire, sir!” Midshipman Hillhouse shouted down from the main mast fighting top. “The Spanish have opened upon us!”
“Now, that’s more like it,” Lewrie said with a satisfied grin.
“The things we do for King and Country,” Lt. Westcott said.
The fortress of Ceuta slowly erupted in flashes of flame from the muzzles of her guns, and large yellowish-grey clouds of gunpowder. It was seconds later that anyone aboard Sapphire could hear the explosions, and long seconds later before massive solid iron roundshot came moaning and droning towards the ship. The Spanish were in no hurry, for Ceuta’s guns tolled down the length of its northern face as slow and steady as a metronome, or a salute fired to honour an incoming ship. Far ahead of Sapphire’s bows, far astern, and between Ceuta and Sapphire, the shot smacked into the sea, still travelling nigh to eight hundred feet per second, raising great, crystalline pillars and feathers of spray and foam that took forever to collapse upon themselves, and Lewrie thought that they looked quite pretty … so long as they were well wide, or well short!
One ball skipped from First Graze, dapping to Second Graze, and finally sank about a cable’s distance to starboard. The fortress’s guns were mounted so much higher than the ship that grazing, skipping shot was a rarity, much more common between ships in combat whose guns were much on the same level. The bulk of the Spanish fire came in a descending arc, which created those immense pillars of spray.
Whee-ooh! First one, then another heavy roundshot moaned overhead to strike the sea beyond Sapphire, higher-pitched as they approached, then going basso as they soared high over the mast trucks and sailed out to sea.
“Those’ll be the big bastards, their version of forty-two-pounders,” Lewrie commented. “Still like the cool breeze, Geoffrey?”
“It’s getting hotter,” Westcott replied. “Well, warm-ish.”
“Just so they don’t glow red,” Lewrie said, lifting his telescope once more. “Is that everything, East to West, from all their embrasures and the upper parapet, d’ye think?”
“Hmm, it seems to be,” Westcott agreed with his own telescope up to his right eye. “Those last shots came from the Eastern end of the fort.”
“Mister Yelland, alter course to loo’rd, put us on the wind and get back to three miles’ range,” Lewrie ordered. “We’ll try the East face, next, once we’re beyond the point.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Yelland shot back, quickly issuing the orders to the helmsmen and hands on the sail-tending gangways. He sounded relieved.
Ceuta’s gunners had adjusted their aim, and their elevations, and the North face of the fortress tolled again, lashing the sea with shot, but Sapphire’s turn to seaward frustrated them. Their 24-pounders and 32-pounders struck well short, and it was only a few of the massive 42-pounders ’roundshot that came anywhere close, but they all missed.
“It doesn’t look as if they’ve had much practice, recently,” Lewrie said with a hopeful note in his voice.
“Good Lord, who’d dare give them any, sir?” Westcott muttered. “We just might be doing them a favour, damn their eyes.”
A last 42-pounder shot plunged into the sea roughly amidships of Sapphire’s length and only a long musket-shot off, throwing up so much spray that the starboard side was drenched, and everyone could hear a quick hiss and see a gust of steam as it sank. Heated shot!
“A bit more than three miles off now, sir,” Yelland reported. “Shall we come back to Due East?”
“Aye, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie agreed, noting that the man was fetching his hat from the deck and plopping it back on his wet hair.
The man’s had a bath, whether he wanted it or not, Lewrie told himself with a hidden smile.
* * *
They turned South once the ship was three miles beyond the end of the peninsula on which Ceuta was sited, and played their dangerous game down the fortress’s East face, ducking in and out of range on a “drunkard’s walk” of course alterations, counting the guns fired at them. Lewrie imagined that the Spanish would refuse to co-operate and not be drawn, after a while, seeing the game for what it really was, and loath to waste powder and shot, but, evidently the officer commanding Ceuta thought that he was in need of a live target and practice, or his touchy Spanish pride was pricked too sore, for when Sapphire turned Sou’west to run in towards the North African coast within two miles of shore, the South face opened upon her, too. After a quick count of the guns in the lower embrasures and the open-air parapets above, Lewrie finally, and secretly much relieved that his ship had not taken any damage, ordered Sapphire to turn South and sail away out of range, halfway to the Moroccan port of Tetuán before wheeling seaward to round the Ceuta peninsula by a wide berth.
“Secure from Quarters, Mister Westcott, and I hope the hands weren’t too bored,” Lewrie said, “standin’ round the better part of the day with not a shot fired.”
“Oh, I think they’ll not mind too much, since there was nothing our guns could’ve done, even had we gone within a mile or less,” Lieutenant Westcott replied. “Ceuta’s a right formidable bastard.”
“Aye, it is,” Lewrie agreed as they descended to the quarterdeck, “and I don’t envy anyone who trades fire with it, or tries to take it. The West face, the main gate, and where any besiegers would have t’set up, that’s a killin’ ground. Dalrymple’s daft to try.”
“If our Navy can keep the French from getting in there, and it can be blockaded proper, maybe Ceuta could be left to wither on the vine,” Westcott decided, “as you told me what you and Mountjoy spoke of. If the French do get a fleet of transports in there and join up with the Spanish garrison, the only shelter from bad weather is on the Southern side, near the landing places, and even that’s wide open to a bad blow.”
“Might not have good holding ground, the same as Gibraltar,” Lewrie agreed.
“And, if the mountain, and the fortress, disturb the winds as badly as Gibraltar does, sir, anyone anchored there for any time may suffer a clear-weather gust and end on their beam-ends, the same as happens at the Rock!” Westcott exclaimed.
Gibraltar Bay, from the Old Mole to the New Mole, was littered with the wrecks of ships caught un-awares, and driven ashore onto the rocks as their anchors dragged due to the strong, fluky winds.