Dewey Lambdin - The King

• Название: The King
• Автор: Dewey Lambdin
• Жанр: Морские приключения

Fresh from war in the Americas, young navy veteran Alan Lewrie finds London pure pleasure. Then, at Plymouth he boards the trading ship Telesto, to find out why merchantmen are disappearing in the East Indies. Between the pungent shores of Calcutta and teaming Canton, Lewrie--reunited with his scoundrel father--discovers a young French captain, backed by an armada of Mindanaon pirates, on a plundering rampage. While treaties tie the navy's hands, a King's privateer is free to plunge into the fire and blood of a dirty little war on the high South China Sea.Ladies' man, officer, and rogue, Alan Lewrie is the ultimate man of adventure. In the worthy tradition of Hornblower, Aubrey, and Maturin, his exploits echo with the sounds of crowded ports and the crash of naval warfare.

---

All of which made Lewrie wonder once more if this whole thing hadn't been dreamed up, this tale of piracy, to bilk the Foreign Office and the Admiralty out of a free ship and cheap goods to make Twigg and Wythy rich. If they cut up a pirate fleet or two in the process, it would make a grand report back home, but who couldn 't find some pirates to bash out here, he wondered? It's not as if one had to go looking for them very hard. The whole ocean teemed with them like lice in a rented bed back home. Mr. Brainard the sailing master was an old China hand, along with Twigg and Wythy, in the "country trade" for years. Even Captain Ayscough had sailed in Asian waters in the last war. On the surface, it would make sense to hire their services on, but they all might be in combination to make a pile of money. Of course, Alan Lewrie had always been a suspicious and somewhat cynical observer of his fellow man. If the whole thing was so much twaddle, he hoped there would be some profit for others out of the venture. Such as himself.

"Sail ho!" the main-mast lookout hailed. "Fine on the starboard bows!"

"A little off the beaten track, surely," Alan commented. "Most merchantmen would be farther west nearer the Malay coast, I'd think."

"Say 'sir' " Percival demanded softly.

"Aye aye, sir," Alan picked back with a bright smile.

"Two sail! Both fine on the starboard bows!" the lookout added.

"Boy, run and inform the captain," Alan told one of the ship's boys.

"My decision to make, Mister Lewrie," Percival huffed. "I am senior officer in this watch, and I'll thank you to remember that."

"Aye, sir."

"Go aloft, Mister Lewrie. Report what you see. I want an experienced pair of eyes in the cross-trees," Percival snickered.

"Aye aye, sir," Alan was forced to reply, much as he hated scaling the masts. He'd done enough of it as a midshipman, and had been damned glad to make his lieutenancy, which at least let him stay firmly rooted to a safe and solid deck most of the time. But he slung a heavy day-glass over his shoulder like a sporting gun, went to the windward shrouds and scampered up the ratlines. Out over the futtock shrouds that inclined outward to anchor the maintop platform and the deadeyes and shrouds that held the topmast erect, hanging by fingers and toes briefly. Then up the narrower set of stays to the cross-trees where the lookout perched on slender bracing slats of wood a fat pigeon would have cast a wary eye upon.

"Where away, Hodge?" Alan asked the grizzled older man. "Three sail, now, Mister Lewrie," the sailor replied, pointing forward. He cupped his work-worn hands round his eyes to shut out the blinding sun. "An' I ain't so sure they ain't sum-mat up t'larboard as well, sir. Jus' a cloud, mebbe, sir."

"Cloud, Hell," Alan puffed, trying to steady his shaking limbs to hold his telescope after that grueling climb. "Four sail to starboard, and perhaps two to larboard. Tell Mister Percival. You've better lungs than I."

While Hodge bawled his report down to the deck, Alan studied the view. They were passing between a sprinkling of small islands and islets between two larger land masses- Anambas to the west of their course, and a larger island of Natuna to the east'rd. There was a safe channel of at least one hundred miles width, but littered with these reefs and islets. Perfect lurking grounds for Malay or Borneo pirates, he thought. They'd try to catch ships passing to the west of Anambas after using the Johore Strait. 'Course, they could be fishermen, Alan thought.

But, as they drew closer, hull-up over the horizon, Alan could see they were using the barest and crudest of sail rigs, and the froth about them was not a wake, but the working of many oars and paddles, far more oarsmen than any fisherman would take to sea. The hulls were blood red, winking with what he took to be gilt trim.

"Hodge, inform the deck I believe they're pirates." Alan stepped out of the cross-trees, took hold of a backstay and wrapped his legs about it to let himself down to the quarterdeck hand over hand in seamanly fashion.

"Half a dozen to starboard, three, possibly four to larboard, sir," Alan told the captain. "Red hulls. Lots of paddlers or oarsmen."

"War praos" Ayscough nodded grimly. "Mister Brainard?" "Aye, sir?"

"Any hopes the wind will pick up?" "No, sir," the sailing master informed him. "Not with this heat, not this far easterly of the usual track. We've everything cracked on now but the stun'sl booms, and not a fraction above seven knots do we make."

"I see," Captain Ayscough grunted. "Then if we can't outrun 'em, we'll have to fight. Mister Choate, beat to Quarters!"

"What is it, Alan?" Burgess Chiswick asked as he came on deck, drawn by the drumming and fifing of the ship's small band. His lean, dark sepoys were struggling into their red coats below them on the gun deck, just below the quarterdeck nettings.

"Pirates, Burgess. Maybe the ones we've been searching for."

"Subadar!" Burgess bawled, shouting for his senior native officer and clattering down to the gun deck.

Telesto mounted a light battery of two twelve-pounders forward on the fo'c'sle as chase-guns, and another two right aft in the wardroom, one to either side of the rudder and transom post to deal with ships attempting to rake her from astern. There were six more twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck, three to each beam. Each gun took a crew of seven men to operate it efficiently in Naval usage, with a ship's boy serving as powder-monkey to fetch and carry from the magazines for each one.

Her main battery was on the upper gun deck; twenty eighteen-pounders which required nine men apiece. Even in the Royal Navy, both sides could not be fully manned at the same time, so there were only eleven men per gun to share between, which would require some nimble hopping back and forth if the pirates attacked from both sides at once: three men to load and charge each gun, and the rest milling about in the center of the gun deck to haul on the tackles to run the guns out and throw their weight on hand-spikes and crows to shift aim right or left while the gun-captain would adjust the elevation of the guns with the new rotating screws. All were, mercifully, equipped with flintlock igniters like a musket, instead of the older types that required a tin or goose-feather quill priming tube and a slow-match fire.

It was on the lower gun deck, though, that Telesto hid her heaviest punch. Roughly amidships, behind what seemed to be unused gunports that had been expanded in size for ventilation in harbor or ease of cargo-handling, she had a battery of thirty two-pounder carronades. These were light, short-barreled guns that could be handled by only two men per gun. They threw a massive six-and-two-thirds-inch shot, not for much over two cables, or thirteen hundred feet, but when that solid shot hit at lower velocity than the conventional guns above them on the upper deck, they ravaged whatever they struck. They were mounted on slides, with a greased block of elm between two wooden rails, with an iron roller to handle the lighter recoil, and they could pivot on a large iron wheel much farther forward or aft than a gun on a wheeled truck, and had a much higher rate of fire than anything but a light swivel gun.

As junior officer, that was Alan's station; the carronades were his charge. He thundered down to the lower gun deck, passed down the narrow passageway between bales and crates of cargo, into the secret section amidships that held his battery. Four guns to each side.

"Tompions out," he ordered, tossing his hat to one side. "About ten native pirate ships. Stand ready to engage on either beam. Let's keep the gunports shut until they're close enough in to scare the bejeesus out of 'em."

"Aye, sir."

"Charge your guns!" Serge bags of mealed gunpowder came up from the magazine on the orlop and were handed over by the powder-monkeys to the gun-captains, who inspected them for dampness, weight and rips or tears. Then they were handed off to the loader, who inserted them into the short, wide-mouthed barrels. The guns had been run back to the last extent of their recoil slides so a flexible rope rammer with a wooden head could push the charges down to the base of the gun with a hard shove.

"Shot your guns!" Both men heaved up solid iron balls from the shot garlands made of arm-thick hoops of discarded anchor cable.

With a little elevation screwed in already, the balls rolled down to thump against the powder bags easily, requiring a lighter shove with the rammers to seat them firm. To cut down on too much of the charge escaping past the windage difference of ball and muzzle, thick hairy patches of raveled rope were soaked in the fire-buckets and rammed down atop the balls.

"Prime your guns."

Cartridges were pricked with the sharp end of a linstock. A measure of powder from a flask hanging from around the gun-captain's neck was dribbled into the touch-holes and pans of the flintlock mechanisms, now pulled back to half-cock. The frizzens over the pans were shut.

"Stand easy," Lewrie ordered. He wished they could open the ports. If the deck had been a roasting pan, then below decks was an oven, and the aroma of crate after crate of opium, balls of it as big as a man's head, was making him a trifle dizzy. The hatchway over his head was rigged with a grating, that grating covered with a tarred sheet of sailcloth, so there was no hope for any air.

The gun crews swayed to the easy motion of the ship, sweat running down their bodies in buckets. Shirts cast off, loose-legged slop-trousers rolled up to the knee, legs and feet bare, with only their kerchiefs above the waist, now tied 'round their heads to save their hearing once the guns began to sing.

"Stand by, the forrud chase guns!" a voice bellowed. And above the sound of the ship as she worked and groaned, they could hear drumming. Not the jerky, uplifting drumming of the ship's bandsmen, but a steady, monotonous boom-boom, boom-boom.

"Reckon 'at'll be th' slave-drivers, sir," the senior quarter-gunner speculated as he shifted a large cud of tobacco in his mouth. "Keep t' pace fer th' oars."

"Saints praysairve us!" an Irish loader whispered, crossing himself, and fingering a tiny silver crucifix 'round his neck.

"And good artillery preserve us, Hoolahan," Alan said with a brief grin. "Good artillery and sharp-eyed gunners."

A twelve-pounder barked from the starboard battery, then the lower gun deck drummed and echoed as the upper deck ports were drawn up and out of the way, and ten eighteen-pounders rumbled across the oak decks on their little wheels and ungreased axles loud as a cattle stampede. Alan crossed to the starboard side to peer out a slit-drain in one of the gun-ports. "About eight cables off now, half a dozen of them. I can see…"

He was interrupted by the blast of the forward-most eighteen-pounder as it lit off, followed in stately, controlled progression by the rest of the starboard battery. Telesto groaned and rocked, gun-carriages squealed as they ran in to the limit of the breeching ropes with the recoil. "Oh, good shooting! The leader's been hit hard. Dismasted. Lot of oars smashed, too."

As he watched, a gun in the bow of the prao returned fire, a large brass gun overly adorned with the scales, mouth and dorsal fin of a dragon. For such a large burst of smoke, the shot fell short, throwing up a huge gout of water in a tall feather of spray.

"Stone shot, sir," the quarter-gunner said. "Bad powder."

"Wind's dying," Alan whispered, and shared a worried look with the man. The ocean was flatter, hardly ruffled by wind, heaving slow and steady, almost glassy-calm farther off toward the horizon. "Do you know how to whistle, Owen?"

"I'll get on it directly, Mister Lewrie, sir."

Telesto sagged a little, heaved and rolled more gently, a sure sign that the wind was failing them, and that they would be becalmed at the worst moment in the middle of a fleet of pirate vessels that could row circles around them. It was an ancient belief that whistling aboard ship brought more wind than any seaman could handle. At that moment, Alan would have settled for a Good Hope gale.

The hatch grating over their heads was drawn back and cast aside, and Hogue, the master's mate, stuck his head down to yell at them. "Mister Lewrie, you're to try your eye once they're in your range. Both sides at once, if you please, sir!"

"Undo the lashings on the gunports and be ready to raise them." Gunfire roared out again, this time from the larboard battery. And they could hear other guns off in the distance. Pirates' guns. Telesto rocked a little more energetically as a heavy stone-shot struck her somewhere aft. There were some warbling sounds as hand-hewn shot crossed over her decks from either beam. But then the starboard battery crashed out its defiance once more, and men above them gave a great cheer. Alan put his eye to the vent-hole of the gunport and saw that one of the praos had been struck in the best English manner, 'twixt wind and water, and had opened up to the sea like a shattered tea cup!

"We've one to starboard, closing us bows-on, about three cables off!" Alan shouted. "Open the ports! Run out your guns! Take aim! Cock your locks!"

This prao was about seventy or eighty feet long, low and rakish. There was no deck, just a platform in the stern for the helmsman and captain, and a fo'c'sle deck forward for two guns. Between there was a walkway that ran the full length of the boat, like an etching of an ancient Roman war-galley. It bristled with flat-faced little men in turbans and printed skirts, armed with spears and swords and a few muskets here and there. There was one mast amidships, with an Arabic-looking lateen sail furled up. Rowers thrashed the water to a foam as they drove in on Telesto. The guns fired.

Telesto was hit once solidly, and once in ricochet as one ball splashed short and raised a great water-plume close aboard.

"Ready!" Alan called. "As you bear… fire!"

The carronades barked as their light powder charges went off, ran back to slam into the stops of their slides. Wool rammers soaked in the fire-buckets were swabbing out at once. As the smoke slowly dissipated, Lewrie could see that their target had been smashed! The prao, roped and pegged together like a dhow, had broken into pieces, spilling her hundreds of warriors into the water. Her bows were torn open, and she was already on her way down. Which caused the ones behind her to falter in their rowing, and turn away from a head-on attack. It was then that Alan could see the many skulls festooned on the closest one's gunwales for decoration.

"Ready, larboard!" he gulped in alarm.

"Jaysus!" Hoolahan yelped. There was a prao not a full cable off the larboard side. Arrows and blow-guns were working, quilting their ship's side as the little yellow men slaved at readying a pair of guns.

"Run out!"

They beat the pirates to the first shot. Four thirty-two-pounder balls hit her squarely abeam, and she shook like a kicked dog. Huge holes opened in her sides, the guns canted up and disappeared somewhere amidships, and they could hear the screams. She rolled back upright, shaking her mast down in ruin, and kept on rolling, filling with the sea and went down like a stone!