Shot his bolt, Lewrie thought, hot anger flushing him that he'd been fooled into reach of the Dutch gunners; now, it's our turn!
"Everyone up! Man your guns! Load, load, load!" he shouted.
The Dutch had fired low, English fashion, "twixt wind and water" instead of emulating the long-range firing of their allies the French, who preferred firing high, to dis-mast and cripple enemy ships, so they could be out-manoeuvred and taken… or fled, if things went against them.
He daren't even look over the side, to see damage done to his beautiful new frigate, how shattered she might be below! Someone would come run tell him, he was mortal-certain.
The Dutch frigate was close, sagging down against Proteus, and Proteus was slowing, with the light, gun-shot wind stolen from her by the sails and rigging of the Dutch, up to windward of her!
Damme for goin ' under, too! he chastised himself; now, we 're to be hull to hull, with no chance of slippin' off!
They would fight like line-of-battle ships, instead of dancing, weaving, and sparring; locked yardarm-to-yardarm, guns blasting with the muzzles almost touching the enemy, taking fire in like manner!
"Load and fire… point-blank! Mister Devereux?"
"Captain, sir?"
"Think it's close enough for grenadoes, now, do you?"
"I do indeed, sir," Devereux replied with a slight grin, drawing his smallsword and shouting at his Marines aloft to light fuses, to get their light swivel guns firing like one-inch bored shotguns, filled with langridge or bags of pistol balls. "Sir… pardon my suggesting it, but… were I you, Captain, I'd pace about. Don't give their marksmen a chance at you."
"If it gets thick, Mister Devereux, I'll lurk behind you. With that handsome red coat of yours, I'm sure you're the finer target."
Wyman got his guns going again, firing at will, as fast as the bores could be swabbed out, reloaded, and run out. Thirteen guns, first; then only twelve as one was up-ended, then eleven. The Dutch must have loaded and prepared that one, good broadside, though, and hadn't crew enough still on their feet to serve their pieces quite so quickly. The Dutch response was eight guns, then seven, then six.
It was deafening, howling chaos, loud enough to make sailors and Marines bleed from their ears and noses. Between the titanic blasts from heavy guns, the barks of swivels, the crack of muskets and pistols, and the dull bangs from flung grenadoes created a continual drumming. Ball spanged and caromed from gun barrels, thonked into timbers and tore out gouts of dust, splinters, and lead splatters. Proteus's quarterdeck was quickly quilled with torn-up slivers of holystoned wood, making it hard to walk. The surgeon's mates, Mr. Hodson and the laconic French йmigrй
Mr. Maurice Durant, made continual trips up from below with the narrow, rope-strapped carrying boards borne by their loblollymen to haul shaken and wounded men below. The dead were piled about the bases of the masts!
"Yah pistols, sah," his Coxswain, Andrews, said, fetching him a brace of double-barreled Mantons. "I thought ya might like havin' yer Ferguson rifle, too."
Lewrie stuck the pistols in his waist-belt, slung the cartouche box over his shoulder, and accepted a horn of priming powder, quickly loading the deadly-accurate breechloader rifled musket. Shooting back, he decided, beat pacing about like a fart in a trance, all hollow! He took aim at an officer in a bicorne hat, swung slowly to follow him as he paced about, bellowing and waving a sword, and…
"Got you!" he exulted after the muzzle-smoke cleared, seeing his foeman fall into the arms of a pair of Dutch mates, then drop below the bulwarks and disappear. One turn of the screw-breech lever, below the trigger and lock assembly; lower the barrel, rip a cartouche open with his teeth, shove it ball-end forward into the barrel, then screw in the opposite direction to close the breech. Frizzen at half-cock, the pan open for a touch of priming powder; snap the frizzen shut; draw the lock to full cock, and search for another target… a thickset gunner's mate or something like that, up on the gangway and urging his crews to load… a careful aim, a pent breath…
"Got you!" he crowed again.
"Sir, their fire's slacking!" Langlie pointed out, coming over to his side. "We're shooting her to pieces, they don't have Smashers, and we're turnin' her into a sieve! They're gatherin' amidships, with pikes and pistols. I think they're about to board us!"
By then, Lewrie was half-deaf and it took concentration to heed Langlie's words, mostly by lip-reading. But the only cannon fire he could hear was now under his own feet. He lowered his gaze to see the damage done to the Dutch frigate's hull, and it did, indeed, resemble a sieve or colander-one could not find a stretch of her scantling more than ten feet long without a ragged, star-shaped hole punched in it! He saw sailors and Marines gathering, cutlasses waving, surviving officers, mates or midshipmen shoving them into order…
"Mister Wyman! Last rounds, then take up arms!" Lewrie called down to the gun-deck. "Boarders! Mister Devereux, your Marines, down from the tops, and ready to re-"
Something went Bang-splang-fwee! off a quarterdeck 6-pounder, a blink before Lewrie felt as if someone had just hit his left arm with a waggon-tongue! He was spun about in a half-circle leftward, to trip over his own feet and tumble to the deck!
"Goddammit!" he meant to shout, but it came out rather weakly, even to his ears. 'Cause I'm gun-deaf? he had to wonder. Suddenly, he was shivering cold, with only the cattle-brand heat in his arm to warm him. He looked up at Langlie and Devereux, as if from the bottom of a well, with the sides blotting out most of the sky, and…
"B-boarders!" he insisted, the ringing in his ears smothering his own words.
"Surgeon's Mate!" someone was keening.
"Never fear, sir… we'll take her for you," someone very like Langlie whispered, leaning down over his face as he was jostled by many hands, soaring aloft like a freed soul, with something hard and narrow under him as he was quickly bound with ropes like some damned soul for spitting and roasting on the Devil's rфtisserie.
"Proteuses… away boarders! Away boarders!"
"No, repel boarders, not…!"
He was sure he'd said it, but no one paid him any mind but for Mr. Durant, who was making clucking noises and shaking his head sadly.
Daylight was gone; he was plunged into reeking, foetid darkness, feet-first into the "fug" of unwashed bodies, bilges, and stinks; below into glim-lit Hades. To the cockpit on the orlop, where the wailing and shrieking of the eternally damned soared and chorused in an atonal agony. Those saved, above, shouted Hosannas of blissful and eternal joy- though they were making a rather noisy, tinkery, metallic and feu de joie music along with their paeans!
"It must come off, at once," Mr. Thomas Shirley, the twentyish surgeon, lowed like a cow, spouting some dry, esoteric dog-Latin.
"Non, non… ze humerus is broken, not shattered, m'sieur," Durant (or somebody Froggish, anyway!) insisted. "See, ze axillary responds when I stick 'is palm, and…"
"Ow! Bloody…!"
"Ze blood loss suggest ze axillary artery is non torn, aussi? Cut eez coat and shirt off, s'il vous plaоt… gently. Ze ball pass through complete, you see? M'sieur Capitaine? Drink zees, an' think ze pleasant thought." Followed by more "Ahumms" and Latin gibberish.
A large pewter cup of rum was shoved under Lewrie's nose and he drank it down, just before a leather gag was put between his teeth to bite on when the pain got severe… which it did!
They probed, retracting wool coat and silk shirt shards, taking out slivers of bone and tiny splashes of lead, Durant insisting that a watered tincture of brandy be splashed around inside the wound, over the instruments, before they squeezed, twisted, and pried at his arm to see how it lined up before getting shot… and re-set it!
"A simple fracture, after all, sir."
"Sonofagoddamnbitchl'llbloodykillyourmiserableFrogass!"