“Five and one-half knots, sir!” he piped back.
Lewrie looked aloft at the set of the sails, the direction at which the commissioning pendant lazily fluttered, and decided that it could be possible to get off three or four broadsides before the battery was too far aft of abeam for the guns to point in their narrow ports.
“As I told Mister Mountjoy, Captain Pomfret,” Lewrie said, “it would be better to anchor a bomb vessel and pound the place with sea-mortars, with thirteen-inch explosive shells. We can only elevate our guns so high, and shootin’ at an incomplete battery wall is too iffy. Go high and over by yards, strike short and tear up the ground under the battery, and the chance of solid hits is damned poor. We might as well shoot at a thin ribbon at a mile’s range.”
“You believe the best we’ll accomplish will be to drive the enemy away, sir?” Pomfret said with a frown. “Hmm, I wonder what Mister Congreve’s rockets could do to the place.”
“Rockets, my God!” Lewrie hooted in sour mirth. “We tried ’em at Boulogne three years ago, and they weaved all over the place, and a couple of ’em came damned close t’hittin’ my ship!”
“They will need a lot more experimenting with before they are useful,” Lt. Westcott said with a shake of his head. “Our experience with them did put the wind up. Seared me out of a year’s growth!”
“Time, I think, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie decided at last, feeling a rising excitement even so. “You may open fire.”
“Aye, sir. By broadsides, fire!” Westcott shouted.
All eleven of the upper gun deck’s 12-pounders lashed out as one in a titanic crash and roar, and the larboard side was swathed in a sudden cloud of sour-reeking smoke.
“My word!” Pomfret gasped. “Impressive, even so!”
“Hope ye remembered t’stuff some candle wax in yer ears,” Lewrie snickered. A moment later and the heavier 24-pounders bellowed even louder, and the concussion was strong enough to make his lungs flutter. Despite his own precautions, Lewrie’s ears rang.
The ship rumbled and trembled as the guns of the larboard battery ran in to the stops of their breeching ropes, were re-loaded, and run out again, trundling tons of metal and gun carriages over the oak decks, with the squeal of wooden truck wheels added.
“Sounds like gastric distress,” Captain Pomfret japed with his smaller pocket telescope to his eye, again. “Egad, Captain Lewrie, I don’t think those soldiers are there any longer!”
Just before the guns delivered their second broadsides, Lewrie snatched a quick view of the headland and the battery, and saw that Pomfret was right; he could not see any Spanish casualties, but could espy a whole host of them running away, up towards the semaphore tower, in hopes that it might be out of range, or haring off along the rutted and dusty tracks to the East or West of the headland. Those lancers on their fine horses were galloping straight North into the foothills of the Sierra Alhamilla and the main road that led to Almeria, bent over their mounts’ necks and looking back in terror.
The upper-deck 12-pounders roared again, followed long seconds later by the massive 24-pounders, and the view was blotted out, again. By the time Sapphire had sailed past the battery and the guns could no longer bear, they fell silent, and the ship was put about for another run, after a full three broadsides.
“Mister Westcott, bowse the larboard guns to the sills, and be ready with the starboard battery,” Lewrie ordered in a too-loud shout in the sudden relative silence. “Stations for stays, and prepare to tack.”
Steering Due West and following the six-fathom line, Sapphire pounded the Spanish battery with another three broadsides, turned out to sea to tack, then went Due East, again, hammering the place with yet another three salvoes. They repeated the manouevre for the better part of an hour. On the next Due East run, before the battery came abeam, Lewrie went up to the poop deck for a better view, joined by Captain Pomfret.
“Those soldiers are back,” Pomfret, said. “Look to the right and above the semaphore tower. They’re on a high knoll, just standing and watching. They seem to be in the same numbers as before.”
“Now they’ve changed their breeches, aye,” Lewrie said with a chuckle. “Too far off to interfere when you land your troops?”
“I imagine that once they see the boats going in, they’ll find their courage and try to defend the place,” Pomfret shrugged off, “but they’ll also realise that they’re out-numbered, and won’t do much more than pestering us. I don’t think they’ll get too close, either, else we might direct all our cannonfire on them, hah hah!”
“Well, it looks as if we’ve done all we can to damage the battery,” Lewrie said, leaning his elbows on the cap-rails of the bulwarks to steady his heavy day-glass. “And, as I feared, that ain’t much.”
The slope up to the parapets was so gouged with heavy iron shot that it appeared as if many tribes of badgers had dug their lairs, replete with several openings to each. The wooden barracks behind the battery had been turned to kindling, and the rooves had fallen in on the shattered walls. Several wild shots had even reached the semaphore tower, severed one long timber leg, and lopped off the platform at the top. The stone battery itself, though … the thick base wall had been undermined, and several of the massive stone blocks had been shifted. One upper section between openings for gun-ports was chipped and downed. All that expenditure of powder and shot, with little to show for it.
“We’ve accomplished nothing that the Spanish couldn’t repair in a month,” Lewrie sourly gravelled, lowering his telescope. “With no store of powder in their magazine, your men might have to take all our mauls and crow-levers and try t’tear the bloody thing down!”
“Iron mauls?” Captain Pomfret asked in sarcasm.
“Wood,” Lewrie told him.
“Hah!” Pomfret barked in mirthless humour.
“Do you think it’s worthwhile t’land the troops?” Lewrie asked.
“Well … we might set fire to what’s left of the tower and the barracks,” Pomfret allowed with a grimace, lifting his telescope for a another look. “There are some heavy waggons to haul the stone blocks left behind, and there are the hoisting frames. They’d burn well, too.”
“Mister Westcott?” Lewrie called down to the quarterdeck. “Do you secure the guns. We’ve no more need of ’em. Hands to the braces and sheets, and prepare to fetch-to.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Westcott replied.
“Fetching-to,” Pomfret asked. “Is that like anchoring?”
“No, we cock up into the wind with the fore-and-aft sails trying t’keep us moving, and the forecourse laid a’back so she can’t,” Lewrie explained. “We’ll slowly drift alee, but won’t go anywhere all that fast. Of course, I’ll want more sea-room ’fore we do, ’fore we drift into the shallows.”
“Deck, there!” one of the lookouts in the mainmast cross-trees shouted. “Two … strange … sail! Two points off th’ larb’d bows!”
“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie barked in astonishment. “They managed t’get out?”
“The Spanish frigates your mentioned before we left Gibraltar?” Captain Pomfret asked.
“They very might be,” Lewrie said, lifting his head and cupping hand round his mouth to shout aloft. “How far away?”
“Hull-down, sir! T’gallants an’ royals is all I kin make out!” was the reply.
“Mister Westcott,” Lewrie said from the top of the poop deck’s larboard ladderway, “we will not fetch-to. Nor will we land the soldiers. Alter course to Sou’east and make more sail.”
“Aye, sir!” Westcott replied, looking wolfish at the prospect of a sea-fight.
“Mister Fywell?” Lewrie instructed the Midshipman aft by the flag lockers and log line. “Fetch out and hoist ‘Discontinue The Action’. Mister Westcott? Load and fire two of the six-pounders of the starboard battery for the General Signal.”