With a little sense of shock, Demansk realized that he liked Sharlz Thicelt. Quite a lot, as a matter of fact. The understanding brought concern rather than pleasure. Could he afford such a personal indulgence?
He decided to worry about it later. The woodclads had emerged from the fleet and were taking their positions against the oncoming steam rams. Less than two hundred yards now separated the opponents.
The sidewheel paddles of one of the steam rams suddenly began churning the water. Demansk could now hear the engines-that animal-sounding chuff-chuff he remembered-and see heavier smoke begin pouring out of the twin tubes poking up from its turtle-shaped carapace. "Funnels," Trae called them.
"Damn," hissed Thicelt. "I was hoping they'd all try a ramming run. Get rid of the problem quick."
Demansk understood the logic, even if he didn't entirely share the confidence that Thicelt and Trae had in the ability of the woodclads to withstand a ram. But… in this area, he freely admitted, his admiral and his son were the world's two experts. Well, leaving aside that weird Emerald genius named Adrian Gellert who had designed these infernal new devices in the first place.
Within fifty yards, the steam ram was up to full speed. The paddles were whipping the water into a froth, tossing a double curl of spray ahead of the ram as it came charging forward. That also Demansk could remember from the siege of Preble-at full speed, assuming the engines buried in its bowels didn't fail, a steam ram could outrace even a war galley.
The captain of the woodclad it was aiming for apparently shared Thicelt and Trae's confidence in his vessel. Either that, or he was simply a very conscientious officer. Whatever the explanation, Demansk could see that he was following orders. Rather than trying to meet the ram head on-no way to avoid it, of course, with such a clumsy ship-he was turning his ship broadside, presenting the juiciest possible target to the ram.
For a moment, Demansk found himself wondering if that maneuver would alert the commander of the steam ram that something was amiss. But, here also, Thicelt's greater experience held true. The Islander had described to Demansk how difficult it was for the captain of a steam ram to think clearly, in the middle of a battle. The engines were not so many feet away from the little armored blockhouse near the bow from which the captain commanded the vessel. Between the din they produced and the poor visibility allowed by the narrow viewing slits in the blockhouse itself, Sharlz said it was like trying to fight while in a shroud. A very protective shroud, granted, but a shroud nonetheless.
And any decision to break off a final ramming drive had to be made quickly. It only took the ram a few seconds to cross the final distance-less than half a minute-before the order to reverse engines was made. That was necessary, of course. Not even one of these new warships could withstand the shock of ramming at full speed.
"Too late now," came Thicelt's soft, satisfied words. "He's committed." The admiral pointed to the woodclad's rigging. "That captain's good, too. Willem Angmer, that is. He's already got the rigging in place."
So he had. The woodclad had unusually heavy masts, very well braced. Partly that was to withstand the impact of a ram, which would normally snap off any mast which hadn't been taken down yet. Even with the heavy bracing, the only reason the woodclad's mast would survive was because of the bulk of the ship itself.
A woodclad's masts were not designed to be taken down in battle, anyway. Because the other reason for the heavy construction was that the masts also served as a weapon. They were Trae's design which he had worked out with Thicelt in the first days after his father brought him into his plans.
The woodclads were triple-masted vessels. The sails had been taken down well before the battle started. The great yardarms which normally held up the sails doubled as derricks. Sailors working on the deck heaved at ropes which levered up extensions onto the yardarms. At the end of each extension rested a huge clay jar, suspended by much smaller ropes. Very similar in design, except fatter in cross-section, to the containers which were used to ship oil. In fact, the things had been made by the same Solinga manufacturer who normally made the oil jars.
The end result was that when the steam ram finally struck the side of the woodclad, the jars would be hanging well out over the deck of the steam ram itself. One of them directly, and the sailors at the next closest mast were already starting to swing that jar toward it. Trae had designed the extensions with hinges which enabled them to cover an arc, not simply the area beneath the yardarms.
Demansk held his breath. The steam ram was now almost invisible to him, on the opposite side of the intervening woodclad. All he could see was the two funnels and the spray being thrown up by the paddlewheels as they reversed.
He saw the woodclad tip, and could almost feel the shudder which ran through it. The rowers on their benches, holding tightly to the oars which they had brought inboard, were shaken back and forth. The sailors at the ropes on the decks, even though they had braced for the impact also, reeled wildly. Several of the ones holding the rope which was swinging the second jar lost their footing entirely. Their jar began swinging wildly.
Demansk winced. "If that thing falls on our ship…"
Thicelt's lips were pursed. "Indeed. I think in the future we'll tell the sailors- there it goes!"
His outstretched finger was pointing at the other jar, the one already hanging over the steam ram. The two men assigned to the task had cut the rope holding it up. Demansk could see the jar plummeting downward. The rope which had been holding it up came whipping behind, up and out of the simple pulley through which it had been threaded.
An instant later, he lost sight of the jar. He thought he heard it shattering on the curved iron deck of the steam ram, but wasn't certain.
It hardly mattered. That it had shattered was not in doubt. Demansk could see the squad assigned to the next task already at work. The "incendiaries," Trae called them. Four of them, now standing at the rail of the woodclad and firing their odd-looking arquebuses down at the steam ram.
"Odd-looking." For a moment, Demansk found himself amused by the thought. How quickly we adjust. There was a time, not so long ago, when I would have called any firearm "odd-looking."
But he had grown accustomed to the sight of arquebuses and cannons by now, even if he didn't have his son's easy familiarity with the devices. And even Demansk could tell that these guns were never designed for normal combat. Their barrels were much too short and wide, as if they had simply been designed to fire something coarse at very close range.
Which, indeed, they had-and the word "fire" was appropriate. Demansk heard four little explosions, coming so close together they sounded almost as one, and saw what looked like four lances of flame spearing down onto the still-invisible steam ram.
Within three seconds, the ram was no longer invisible. Not exactly. The inflammable liquid with which the shattering jar had coated the steam ram-some ungodly concoction made up by Trae and his design team of apothecaries-turned-arsonists-erupted in flame. Followed, an instant later, by a huge cloud of roiling black smoke.
Again, Demansk found himself holding his breath. This was, in theory, the most dangerous part of the operation-especially if the enemy vessel's ram had become wedged in the heavy baulks which formed the woodclad's "hull."
They weren't really part of the hull. The true hulls of the woodclads were heavy in their own right, much more so than a normal warship's. But the real protection came from heavy timbers bolted on, which could be replaced after a battle.