H. M. S. Cockerel, page 43
Lewrie got to the top of the bulkhead, crawled across it and looked down onto the forecastle. There were half a dozen dead below, a like number writhing and shrieking . . . but a full two dozen running forward toward him. Muskets crackled near his ears, making them ring, and a few of the French skidded or tumbled to a halt, the ones behind tripping over them, and coming to a stop. Lewrie drew his second pistol, glanced left to see a reassuring flash of red uniform coat. The Irish had made it across!
The French took pause, confused by the sight of British Red, a heartbeat standing still. Then the corvette was quaking to a second broadside, and the men below were scythed away by raking fire, as more iron bowled and caromed the length of her gun deck!
“Take the forecastle!” Lewrie pleaded, turning to search for Lieutenant Kennedy. There he was! “Kennedy! Take the forecastle! Right to the railing! Volley and cover us!”
The Irish swept past him, bayonets winking, muskets presented at hip level; about twenty men shuffling into ranks whilst the first brave ten hurriedly reloaded to a clatter of ramrods.
“Grapnels, now! Set ’em to the catheads, behind the troops!”
He took the larboard side, Bosun Porter the starboard, trailing heavy four-inch manila lines across from Radical, heavy-barbed grapnels being carried by seamen. Skulking low, as the French got organized at last, as they picked themselves up amid a welter of blood and smoke, of sensible order overturned. Ignoring the shrieks of men torn in half by iron shards, those quilled like hedgehogs by splinters, or crushed and howling beneath shattered gun carriages, they were advancing, their numbers growing quickly. Musket fire began to buzz around them. Men went down. Lewrie lost his second hat, felt a brush against his scalp, and staggered, as a musket ball clipped the hair above his left ear.
But they had the grapnels set, two wraps about the projecting cathead timbers, then driven deep into the bulwarks. Lewrie could see the strain coming on the lines, lifting them like snakes from the deck and turning them bar-taut. And a look forward showed him de Crillart and some of his regular gunners coming over, with French soldiers in a bunch along Radical ’s gangway, clumsily scrambling for handholds.
“Hurry!” he shouted to them, waving Charles forward. “For God’s sake, hurry ’em over! We can’t hold long!”
Sure enough, there were men dashing along either gangway toward his outmanned boarding party. Porter to starboard had two pistols in his hands, seamen—Royalist French and British—at his back, ready with cutlasses or a few loaded muskets. Lewrie cocked his second pistol and leveled it, glaring down the barrel at the men running directly at him.
Hoping they might flinch. And his own body turned side-on, like a duellist. Hoping he wouldn’t be shot!
“First rank . . . y’r lef’ front!” Kennedy bawled. “Level! Fire!”
Ten men fired by volley, into the head of the pack facing Bosun Porter, taking down five and throwing the rest into confusion, which Porter exploited with a pistol or musket volley of his own.
“First rank, recover and reload. Second rank, y’r right front! Level! Fire!”
Lewrie shot first, taking down a French midshipman, an aspirante who had been brave enough to charge him, until he’d seen the pistol in a dead line with his chest. He’d stumbled to a halt, bringing up his own, getting bowled over by his seamen. The boy’s waistcoat turned red as he was flung backwards by the ball, almost going erect again, before being trampled by the ones behind. Alan brought up his sword, matched blades with a cutlass-swinging petty officer who’d outrun the pack as Kennedy’s soldiers tore gaping holes in the men who’d been slow to follow him. Screams of alarm, of disbelief as men realised they had been shot down, or that they’d been spared whilst a friend had not.
Two, three engagements, clashing steel against steel, high then low, to his left as the petty officer swung again, parrying him off to the right and over his head. Tripping him with his foot and shouldering the burly man off balance. A heartpounding gasp as he leaped back and ran him through, sideways, ducking as the cutlass came swinging at his head, backhanded. But the petty officer going down to his knees, with a death wound below his ribs.
No time to reload, no time to think! Another man, leaping the carnage the 18th had strewn on the gangway, confronted him, an officer for sure, with a smallsword. Up came his bloody blade to ring upon the foe’s. But Lisney was beside him with a cutlass, at the head of the larboard forecastle ladder, making him spin away to confront them both. And Gittons beside Lisney, two more British sailors following them. The officer broke off, beginning to back-pedal, glancing over Lewrie’s head, as if to draw his attention off, now and again.
“Third rank . . . advance to the railings . . . cock y’r locks! And level!” Kennedy was shouting. And there were French shouts, too, of encouragement, coming from the beakheads and bulkhead behind Lewrie.
He advanced with a leap, sure he was being reinforced at last. The French officer was forced to meet his blade, begin the clashing of steel, the thrust, parry and anticipation amid the clatter of metal on metal as if an itinerant tinker band was repairing pots. Hilt to hilt, the Frenchman growling as one of his best overhand thrusts was averted. He leapt back, stamped his foot to advance, fencing-school fashion, and came spiralling in. Lewrie met his blade on the edge of his, about midlength. And the damned thing snapped!
His foe grinned as he cleared his arm for a thrust. Desperately, Alan was on him, right shoulder forward, brawling now instead of fencing, seizing the man’s sword-hand wrist and jabbing him through the throat below his jaw with the ragged stub! Gave him another, lower down in the belly as he sagged against him. Nose to nose, looking into those dying eyes for an instant, jumping back to avoid the rush of gore from his mouth as he tumbled face-down. And taking his sword from him.
“Cockerels!” he bawled, waving his new weapon on high. “To me, lads! Kennedy, take the gun deck! Now! Don’t give ’em time to think!” He turned about to see Louis and his cavalrymen mustering to starboard on the forecastle. “Louis! The gangway! Charge! Et. . . damme! Debarquement! The gangway! Clear it! Porter, show ’im!”
“We ’ave arrive, mon ami, ” Charles de Crillart said breathlessly. He shouted over his shoulder, ordering his gunners to join Porter and Louis on the starboard gangway, as Major de Mariel’s first soldiers came up.
“Join Kennedy and de Mariel, clear the gun deck. I’ll take the larboard gangway. Meet you aft, Charles. Bonne chance. ”
“Oui, bonne chance, Alain,” Charles agreed, drawing his sword.
“Cockerels, let’s go!” Lewrie shouted, advancing.
Kennedy’s 18th Royal Irish, not waiting for de Mariel’s men to take order in their rear, advanced, bayonets leveled, down the ladders to the gun deck, forming up before the foc’s’le belfry in two long ranks across the deck. “Forward, the 18th! Up, the Irish!” Lieutenant Kennedy cried. And they charged. “Hoolooloolooloo!” they screamed, an ancient, pagan Gaelic war cry, full-throated, ululating hatred and slaughter, the wolves of Erin, who had never been conquered by Caesar’s legions; these fierce rejects of that unhappy land. “Hoolooloolooloo!” they bayed. And foes shrank in terror before them.
A continual fusillade of pistol pops, musket reports, screams and wails, the tinny sounds of blades battering against each other. Mêlée and mayhem, a swirling, twisting, nightmare dream of killing, of being killed, of narrowly avoiding death. Down went a man with a boarding pike to Lewrie’s new sword, skewered through the belly. Another blade glittering as it descended toward his outstretched arms. Lisney there to fend it off, to hack the next foe down. Midshipman Spendlove under his arm, to dash forward, dirk in one hand, cutlass in the other, cutting right and left, horizontal. Sweeping the cutlass upward to tear a topman open, stamping and extending his left arm to stab another.
Lewrie sagged against the bulwarks, panting for air, wincing to a cut on his left leg he couldn’t recall receiving, his mouth dry as dust. Looked to his left, saw Chevalier Louis at the head of his thrusting, swinging cavalrymen, popping off with musketoons and pistols. And saw Louis and the three men behind him taken down by a blast from a swivel gun on the quarterdeck! The gunner, leaning far out over the bulwark to fire down the gangway, was shot through the heart the next moment. Below, Irish bayonets jabbing, overhand and underhand, a French sailor with an Irish soldier by the throat, dirk stabbing, all the while his own body rising off the deck, hoisted by three more bayonets. A pistol going off near Kennedy’s head, missing at point-blank range, and Kennedy hewing the shooter down!
Cony’s grenadoes going off, far aft, lofted as far as he could throw them, waiting dangerously long as the fuses burned down, so that they went off in midair, at eye- or waist-level!
And dragging himself back into the fray, as the French sailors began at last to give way, falling back as far as the main chains. Half the corvette was theirs! Slipping and sliding aft along the larboard gangway, stepping over dead men, the cruelly wounded, hacked and chopped open or apart by British sailors going through the whole brutal ballet of the full cutlass drill.
The next minute or so, Lewrie was too busy to ever recall what he’d done, as he slashed and stabbed, fired off a pistol, he thought, once, and took down a bosun’s mate with a musket.
Then he found himself on the enemy’s quarterdeck, a cutlass in his hand, from where, he had no memory. Facing off with an officer in a coat ornately trimmed in gold-lace oak leaves. Clash, slash, stamp . . . return to the balance foot, recover, then stamp and slash down and left, advance, back and right, balance and recover . . . his years as a midshipman and the cutlass drill had never left him . . .
And the man was throwing down his sword, backed up against the double-wheel drum, throat bared, panting hard, with fear in his eyes.
“Strike?” Alan gasped. “Amenez? Vous êtes le capitaine?”
“Oui,” the fellow wheezed, slipping to his knees. “
Amenez-vous? You strike?” Lewrie demanded.
“Oui,” the man nodded weakly, eyes shut and filled with tears.
“Lisney?” Alan called out.
“’E’s dead, sir,” Seaman Gold said at his side, gasping for air himself and bleeding from several scrapes and cuts.
“Take him, Gold. He’s your prisoner,” Lewrie ordered, filled with wonder. He strode aft to the taffrail, cutlass ready should any of the foemen huddled there present a danger. But they threw down all their weapons at his fell approach.
“Cockerels! Mes amis! Quarter! Merci! They’ve struck to us!” he shouted, turning to face the soldiers of the 18th, the Royal French infantry coming up to the quarterdeck. Then took hold of the flag halliard and set it free. Hauled in. And lowered the gigantic Tricolour battle flag to drape below the stern, trailing in the water, over the captain’s stern gallery, in sign of her defeat.
“Cap’m, sir,” Cony summoned, as Lewrie leaned against the taff-rails, feeling utterly spent, woozy and weary beyond belief. “Mister Lewrie, sir? T’is Mister de Crillart, sir. Ya gotta come quick, sir. He’s adyin’, sir, an’ ’e’s askin’ f’r ya.”
Lewrie lowered his head to his knees for a second, took several restoring breaths, then followed. As cheers of victory began to rise, as men opened their mouths to yell to the heavens that they were still alive and able to yell . . . Lewrie found his friend.
Charles de Crillart had been blown almost in half, just as he’d begun to ascend the starboard quarterdeck ladder up from the waist, he had been the first man struck by a load of grape-shot from a swivel gun. His heels still rested over his head on the ladder, the rest sprawled awkwardly . . . brokenly . . . at its foot. His head below his trunk, perhaps, was all that kept him conscious.
“Alain . . .” he muttered weakly, clawing at the deck in agony, as the shock wore off and the pain of his ravaged lower body sank in. His legs were both broken, almost amputated, his belly plumbed by shot.
“Here, Charles,” Alan groaned when he saw him. He could not help sinking to his knees beside him. De Crillart reached out blindly, eyes wavering back and forth as if his sight was already slipping, and Alan took his hand.
“Maman . . . et, ahahh! ” he flinched, trying not to writhe to his intense pain, yet having to, which caused even more. “Maman et Sophie, Alain. I am going, I canno’ aid . . . ahhh!”
He had to bite his lip so hard to keep from crying out, and un-manning himself, that he drew blood.
“Alain, promesse. . . Louis . . .” de Crillart grunted.
“Louis is . . .” Alan said, wondering if he could lie to ease him.
“I see, Alain. I see eem fall. ’E eez . . . ?”
Cony gave his head a negative shake as Lewrie looked up at him.
“Charles, your brother . . . il nous à quittes. He is gone. I’m sorry.”
“Maman et Sophie, zey alone now . . . you mus’ promesse. . .” Lieutenant de Crillart insisted, squeezing Lewrie’s hand so hard he felt his bones grate. He relaxed his grip as the spasm eased, his grip went flaccid, almost slipped from Alan’s grasp for a moment, as his flesh grayed and his lips blued. “See zem to America . . . tak’ care of zem for me . . . I beg you, Alain, plais? Promesse? ” He demanded a little stronger, digging into his last reserve.
“I promise you, Charles,” Alan intoned.
“Promesse, on . . . votre honneur!”
“On my honour, Charles, as an English gentleman . . . as a commission officer in the Royal Navy, I swear to you, I’ll take care of them. I’ll see them someplace safe,” he croaked, blinking back tears.
“Bon,” de Crillart sighed, shrinking away. His hand, as cold as ice, slipped from Lewrie’s hand. “Bon,” he said again, the breath his last, hissing out to rattle in his throat as his eyes glazed over. Alan closed them for him, crossed his arms upon his breast.
“Goddamn,” he whispered, sitting back on his heels.
“Good feller, ’e waz, sir,” Cony said in sympathy.
“So were a lot of men, just died,” Lewrie grunted, chin on his chest. “God help me, Cony, I’m so weak, I . . .”
“Alluz are, sir, after th’ battle’s done. Help ya up, sir?”
“Yes, thankee, Cony.” He got to his feet, swabbing his face on his sleeve. “Many others?”
“Fair number, sir. Mister Porter an’ me, we’re makin’ th’ list.” They began to walk forward through the carnage, making a quick inspection. “ Radical, she’s beat up hellish-bad, sir. Stove in, an’ leakin’, I ’spects. Mister Porter’s been below here, sir, says she come through in good shape, below the waterline. Jus’ looks damn’ bad.”
There were bodies everywhere one looked, pulped, halved, broken and punctured, flopping in death throes, half-buried beneath overturned guns. There the doughty Major de Mariel, then another French soldier. A pair of the 18th, almost arm in arm as they died. A cavalryman hung over the starboard gangway. Men in civilian clothing, with their white armbands, strewn about like slaughtered game birds. But mostly French Republican sailors, thank God—hewn down, hacked down, scythed down by musketry, double-shotted iron, and cutlasses. Moaning, empty-eyed wounded clutching their hurts, sitting on the decks in shock.
There was a cannon shot, a deep-bellied roar.
“Oh, God, no!” Lewrie wailed, losing his rigidly enforced calm. “That bloody frigate!”
He and Cony dashed forward, leaping over obstacles, to ascend to the foredeck where they might have a view. There, close-aboard, was a warship, her pristine masts and yards towering over the two entangled ships. Flying a White ensign and “Do You Require Assistance.” Lewrie waved to her, both arms wide. She was huge, bluff and tall, a massive two-decker 64. Where had she sprung from, he wondered?
“Sir!” Spendlove shouted from Radical ’s quarterdeck, aft at her taffrails. “Mister Lewrie, sir! What signal do I send her, sir?”
“Send her ‘Affirmative,’ Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie shouted back. “And I’m damned glad I am to see you alive, by the way, lad!”
“Makes two of us, sir!” the imp grinned, bloodied but whole. “I have her private number, sir. She’s Agamemnon, Capt. Horatio Nelson! Beyond, there’s Mermaid, 5th Rate 32, Capt. John Trigge,” Spendlove prated on, even as he bent on the “Affirmative” to a signal halliard. “And Cockerel, sir. She really did go for help, like you said, sir!”
“Sir!” Bittfield, the senior gunner, was yelling, too, trying to draw his attention. “Takin’ on water bad, she is, sir. Hadda get all the dependents up t’ th’ weather deck, sir. Best we get our people back aboard soon, we don’t wish t’ lose ’er, sir.”
“Cony, fetch Mister Porter and all the men he can gather up,” Lewrie ordered. “Patch what you can, until Agamemnon sends her hands to aid us. And get everyone, no matter who, working on the chain pumps.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Lewrie crossed over to Radical, working his way out the jib boom sideways on the foot ropes, to the bulwarks in which the corvette’s bow was deep-sunk. Looking down, he could see crushed planking between two rows of vertical hull timbers. Perhaps that was the worst damage, none of it too far below the waterline, he hoped.
He gained the larboard gangway and looked down into the waist. Women and children milled about down there, weeping and wailing, crying to heaven. Surgeons moved among them, loblolly boys were fetching up more from below, on the orlop. Wounded women! Dead, lolling children!
Dear God, that last broadside she got off, just before we went up in-irons, he quailed. The collision, everything come adrift below . . . ! I killed ’em, winnin’ my damned . . . victory!
He was at the head of the larboard quarterdeck ladder, about to descend, when Phoebe came rushing from the press to its foot, came up to throw herself upon him, laughing and weeping at the same time.
Thankee, Jesus, she’s alive! Thankee! he thought, hugging her no matter who saw them. Stroking her hair as she babbled, one minute trembling and bubbling over with joy, the next instant bawling fit to bust—all punctuated by hiccoughy French tripped off so fast he couldn’t catch a word in twenty.
“Calm, Phoebe, calm . . . I’m alright now. Calm,” he shusshed.
