“Sounds … ambitious,” Lewrie said, nodding. “Not that I know all that much about land-fighting, but it may be so novel an approach that the enemy would be confused, and overwhelmed by the speed with which it’s done. So, you’re satisfied, Mister Keane, in the tactics, and with Captain Pomfret?”
“Completely, so, sir,” Keane enthusiastically told him, and that was saying something from a man as stern and sobre as Keane.
“Very good, then,” Lewrie said, glad that the land side of any future landing seemed to be in good hands. “Weather allowing, we will embark the troops tomorrow afternoon, and sail at first light the day after. Thank you, Mister Keane, for your opinions.”
“Aye, sir,” Keane said, finishing his glass of tea and rising.
“More tea, sir?” Pettus asked once Keane had departed.
“No, not for now, Pettus,” Lewrie told him, moving over to the settee where he could sprawl and prop his feet on the tray table. He still had his doubts about striking at the incomplete battery at Cabo de Gata, worried that Mountjoy might be too eager to show his superiors in London that they were getting a good return on the money they’d advanced him, and that he’d chosen Cabo de Gata for lack of actionable information on a better one. Lewrie hoped that Mountjoy hadn’t opted for it out of quiet desperation! If he’d been in charge of selecting targets, he would have waited ’til that battery was complete, but … he wasn’t in charge; he was still a gun-dog to Secret Branch, even after all these years.
“Sit up, beg, sic ’em,” he sourly muttered. “Good boy!”
That drew Chalky from his contemplations of devouring the gulls that alit on the stern gallery’s rails. He came trotting with his tail up, mewing for attention and leapt into Lewrie’s lap for a minute or two of pets, before settling down for a slit-eyed nap, sprawled across Lewrie’s legs.
Lewrie considered going to his desk to pore over the operational details one more time, closely scan the best coastal chart that could be found with a magnifying glass looking for the unforseen reef, shoal, or obstruction, but he’d already done that a dozen times. He yawned, and considered a nap might be of better use. The next day, the weather allowing, he’d be busy with the last-minute preparations and the loading of troops, and at getting his ship to sea the next. Tonight was his last opportunity for a run ashore, and a man would need to be well-rested for a night with Maddalena.
Damme, I keep with her much longer, and I’ll have t’send to London for another two dozen o’ the Green Lantern’s very best cundums, he mused, not trusting the cheaper ones smuggled cross The Lines from Catholic Spain, where the prevention of babies was harshly dis-approved, if not the risk of catching the Pox from a diseased doxy. Lewrie thought that the Spanish might even accept that risk as a scare tactic to keep their benighted people chaste!
Since that blabbed “dear to me”, and Maddalena’s declaration in kind, she had not said anything more upon that head, but she had become fonder, more affectionate, and even more passionate for a certainty, walking closer to him when they went about the town, reaching across restaurant tables to touch hands when they dined, and rewarded him with bright, adoring smiles. In her lodgings, she even hummed to herself, and her bird and her kitten, as if pleased with the entire world, and when in bed … frantically and often!
A nap, definitely, Lewrie told himself; Else a hot kiss and a cold breakfast’d like t’kill me!
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“It seems we’ve created quite a scramble already, sir,” Captain Pomfret said as he peered ashore with his pocket telescope. “Might I borrow your glass, Captain Lewrie?”
“Certainly,” Lewrie said, handing over the much longer and much stronger day-glass as Sapphire and the transport closed the coast off Cabo de Gata under reduced sail.
“Oh, yes!” Pomfret said, with a laugh. “The semaphore tower is whirling away like a Turk Dervish, and the tent camp looks like an ant hill that some boys have kicked … all the workers are hitching or saddling up, and running inland.”
“El diablo negro,” Lt. Westcott said with a laugh, baring his teeth in a brief, harsh grin. “That’s what the Dons called us when we were taking and burning anything that would float, before all of the pieces of our force were assembled.”
“Their troops … they’re standing fast,” Pomfret pointed out, lowering the heavier telescope for a moment. “They’re forming before the battery walls, those dozen cavalry on their left. Lancers, by God! How useless!” he scoffed.
“They won’t be there long, after we open upon ’em,” Westcott said.
“Those lancers might be better placed above the beach,” Pomfret said, handing the day-glass back. “To disrupt our landing, though once we’re ashore in strength they’d have no choice but to retreat up the draw, and it’s too rough ground for them to re-form and charge us … their infantry would be more a threat to us.”
“You only see the one company reported to us?” Lewrie asked.
“So far, yes, sir,” Captain Pomfret replied, “and what passes as roads leading to the Cape are empty. We could see any re-enforcement coming for a long way off, the land’s so open.”
“Tell us when, Mister Yelland,” Lewrie called out to the Sailing Master, who, with a syndicate of older and more mathematically-inclined Midshipmen, had been taking the known heights of the headland to determine when Sapphire was roughly a mile off.
“Almost, sir,” Yelland called back.
“Seven fathom!” a leadsman in the fore chains shouted. “Seven fathom t’this line!”
“Almost, indeed,” Lt. Westcott muttered under his breath.
The Harmony transport stood at least half a mile off Sapphire’s starboard quarters, already beginning to fetch-to into the wind, with her six landing boats already being drawn up from towing to the chain platforms on either beam.
“Six fathom! Six fathom t’this line!”
“Now, sir!” Yelland called out.
“Alter course to Due East, Mister Westcott, and run out the larboard guns,” Lewrie ordered. “I’ll have the upper-deck twelves as the first broadside, and the lower-deck twenty-fours the second.”
“Aye, sir!”
Sapphire’s bows had been pointed at the headland, their view from the quarterdeck partially obscured by the jibs. As the helm was put over, the up-thrust jib boom and bowsprit swung clear, the jibs sweeping right like the parting of a stage curtain to reveal the headland and the battery to one and all. The ship rumbled and thundered as gun-ports were swung up and away, and the great guns were hauled to the port sills, already loaded with solid iron shot. Sailing Due East, their target lay four points off the larboard bows, slowly inching to abeam. A couple of minutes more, and fire could be opened.
“Have ’em prime, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped, eager to be about it, even if he thought it could be a waste of gunpowder at that range. Below, gun-captains would be directing the crews to open the pans of their flintlock strikers to fill them with powder, then cock their locks, making sure that their trigger lines were slack. In the swab-water tubs between each gun, coils of slow-match sizzled, waiting to be wrapped round linstocks that would be applied to the touch-holes of the guns should the flintlock strikers fail, or a flint break at the wrong moment.
“Cast of the log!” Lewrie shouted, and a long minute later, Midshipman Fywell snatched the log line as it paid out and read the knots which had slipped through his fingers.