Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Commander

• Название: A King`s Commander
• Автор: Dewey Lambdin
• Жанр: Морские приключения

Alan Lewrie is now commander of HMS Jester, an 18-gun sloop. Lewrie sails into Corsica only to receive astonishing orders: he must lure his archenemy, French commander Guillaume Choundas, into battle and personally strike the malevolent spymaster dead. With Horatio Nelson as his squadron commander on one hand and a luscious courtesan who spies for the French on the other, Lewrie must pull out all the stops if he's going to live up to his own reputation and bring glory to the British Royal Navy.

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"Well debark your party as we sail back out toward the bluff. Five minutes, I make it, before we let you slip. Hurry."

Lewrie looked back toward the quay as Bootheby assembled troops, calling some of them from the guns to dash below and fetch their coats and hats, spatter-dash gaiters, belts, and gear. Knolles had the lines cast off, and the first rags of sail were being hoisted. Andrews with the gig was almost to them, and he could see shouted exchanges as his cox'n relayed his orders.

Above Bordighera, some civilians at last showed themselves, on the rocky, low-shrubbed heights. No threat there… yet, Alan thought grimly, as he eyed them with his glass. No sign of reinforcements, or that Bordighera had had a larger garrison. The crowd grew larger, and thinking themselves safely distanced, began to wave their fists, shout silent imprecations and curses. A few mounted men, waving swords about in the air, though they were dressed as civilians. No, there were some few men in uniform climbing up to them. Stragglers from the tartanes, he surmised; in French Navy uniforms, what appeared to be a lieutenant leading them. No sign of firearms, though. Or not too many, he told himself. At that distance, it would be hard to discern a musket from a manure fork!

What could they be so angry about? he wondered. They were Savoians, conquered by Frogs, ripped away from their longtime allegiance to Sardinia!

Rather a lot of fit young men up there, he frowned; and them the angriest. Don't tell me they prefer the Frogs, he gawped to himself! Worse than Yankee Doodles, I swear…!

Throw off your kings, your princes, the French cooed. Stand up and be free men, with liberty, equality, fraternity for all. Had their blandishments taken root here, in tiny, sleepy Bordighera? In spite of how butcherous the French Revolution really was, how two-faced the real motives were… they weren't out to liberate Europe, they were out for conquest and domination!… as callous and canting…

Well, there was Holland. Sensible damned people, peaceful, and prosperous. In point of fact, rather a damned dull people, the ones he had met. Yet thousands had been elated to see their nation conquered, a Batavian Republic proclaimed, and thousands more had enlisted in the army, to fight alongside the Frogs. What on earth, Lewrie puzzled; it don't make sense, the allure the Frogs had on people!

He lowered his glass as the quartermasters steered Jester along the western beach, crabbing up into the wind and preparing to tack, to make a short board across the harbor toward the peninsula, and those bluffs, where the shattered battery still smoldered. The winds were scant, as usual, and she barely ghosted. Across her bows, Lieutenant Knolles aboard Bombуlo was leading out their prizes toward the entrance channel. Waving and shouting in glee. Lewrie counted heads. Not a single man down, no casualties! That'd make good reading in his report.

"We could wear off th' wind, sir," Buchanon suggested. "Or we could fetch-to. Light as 'is wind be, do we bare a jib or th' driver, it'd be as good as heavin' in on a spring line, 'thout anchorin'."

"Fetch-to, Mister Buchanon," Lewrie decided. "So we may keep the larboard battery directed at the shoreline road. Should that mob work up its courage, the sight of our guns should daunt 'em."

"Aye, sir."

"Landing party's ready, sir!" Porter reported.

"Away, the landing party, Mister Porter."

Now he could do nothing but wait. Oh, a dashing captain might go ashore himself. That made hellish-good reading in reports, too, at the Admiralty. Made for good fiction, Lewrie snorted in derision; the plucky, aspiring young captain at the head of his troops, doing what a junior officer was hired on for. Lieutenants were expendable; and he'd been "expended," or nigh to it, often enough in his past to know that, now hadn't he? Under the right circumstances, he still might have to exert himself beyond his captain's role. But if one wished officers in one's wardroom to aspire, one gave them first shot at the sharp end of the dirty stick, and didn't go about trying to hog all the glory at their expense. How else were they to rise, without getting their name mentioned in dispatches? They usually resented that type of captain.

A quarter-hour of fidgeting and fretting that his plan misfired, that he hadn't thought of everything. A captain's proper duties, Alan glowered, worrying without showing it; about French cavalry, a battalion appearing over the heights, a battery of siege guns that might just be in-transit on the coast road toward San Remo and pop up to take Jester under fire, forcing him to sail off or lose her, abandoning the Marines. Survivors lurking in the kinky shrubs behind the battery, sniping and skirmishing. A French warship happening by out to sea, espying smoke from the bluff, and… That damned mob gathering its courage?

At last!

Smoke curling and wavering over the battery. Thicker smoke and the red flicker of flames as field carriages, wheels, limbers and shot and powder caissons were set ablaze. A gun barrel, man-hauled by rope about its cascabel, went rumbling down the steep slope of the entrance face, to tumble and roll, turning muzzle-up as the heavier weight of the breech dragged it. And trailing a plume of dust, gravel, and rock behind it as it fell, so that it looked as if it reeked powder smoke after being fired. A second followed it, and with his telescope, he could determine that Meggs and Crewe had done a very thorough job of it; trunnions blown or hammered off, making it impossible to mount it on a carriage again, even should the French recover it from the shoal beneath the bluffs.

As overburdened as the supply roads already were, useless but valuable guns sent back to a foundry to be recast or repaired might be an even greater delay to the French, taking precious draught animals from moving things forward] Lewrie strongly suspected they'd rust out where they lay, alongside the detritus of Roman triremes, till the Last Trumpet, too hard to dredge for, or raise.

Bootheby and his Marines appeared, a slim scarlet snake curving down the bluff road. A fife and drum playing, a short column of twos tramping in good order, with skirmishers thrown out ahead and to botli sides. And sailors in slop clothing a shambling blot in the rear. A five-minute march, and they'd be at the boats again. Lewrie heaved a huge sigh of relief. It was almost done. He turned to look at Bombуlo, which drifted bare-poled about one cable seaward of the channel. There was no signal from her that an enemy ship had come into sight, either! That mob…

Finally, they were moving downhill, the mounted men leading them. Nothing like an army, it was still a righteous but disordered mob, with women and children alongside. No fight in them, Lewrie thought with even more relief; they just want a good excuse to shout. Probably hasn't been this much excitement in Bordighera since the Crusades, he allowed himself to chuckle.

And along the eastern shore road, where the two French companies had been slaughtered. Hullo, there were Bordigherans there, he started. No, no threat in them, either. Old women in black, a few younger women in gayer gowns, some gaffers and kids.

Keening and wailing over the broken dead, some of them. The wind brought thin screams, wails, and prayers to Jester, as civilians raised their hands in supplication, beat their breasts, and wrenched at their undone hair, throwing their heads back to howl like hounds in mourning.

' 'Ey've profesh'nal mourners back home beat all hollow, sir," Bucha-non grunted, as the civilians began to drag off the badly wounded, or prop up those lesser hurt and get them to their feet to stagger off, crying and weeping with agony.

"Might give these local lads a bellyful of war, Mister Buchanon," Lewrie spat. "Were they of a mind to volunteer before, well…"

"Mourners, my eyes, sir!" Buchanon said with an outraged snort. Looters, more like. Look yonder, sir."

Sure enough, once Lewrie raised his telescope again, he could see pockets being turned out, boots and stockings stripped off, the bloody knapsacks being rifled. Taking his first close-up look at his handiwork, Lewrie could view horribly wounded men being rolled over, so the looters could get at their valuables, flailing their hands weakly, or screaming in protest, shaking their heads to be left alone to die, in peace. Those hands being stripped of rings, bloody purses, or tobacco pouches torn away from punctured waistcoat pockets. Urchin children quarreling over corpses, and their pitiful wealth, like buzzards. A few of the younger women honestly grieved, and took no part in looting.

Simple little fishing-town girls, Lewrie thought, bedazzled by romantic young soldiers, so exotic, from so far away, bragging about booty and plunder and glory. When conquered, there were always those who'd snuggle up to the victors who could offer power, money, or food when everyone else went hungry. Or could offer novel adventure, love… yet even a few of those weeping young girls had the common sense to pick their dying lovers' pockets. For mementos. Or a token of security for their own precarious futures.

"Mister Bittfield!" Lewrie howled. "A round-shot over their heads! Well over, mind. But scare those harpies off!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

Boom! went a larboard nine-pounder, its ball a rising black dash-mark aimed with the quoin below the breech fully out. A redoubling of the wailing ashore, but for their own safety now as they scattered, running in all directions, skirts hiked up to their knees. The shot struck earth a full mile away, but they weren't to know that. Again, the road was as empty of life as it had been just after the broadside.

Another, larger boom\ atop the bluff, as the assembled powder charges and spare kegs exploded. Another Vesuvius-like eruption that flung charred gun tools and carriage timbers into the midmorning sky, and a patter of rock and gravel that rained down as far as the Marines re-embarking on the narrow beach.

The mob, which had been so intent upon re-entering their town, perhaps advancing toward the battery, had also scattered to the four winds. Bordighera was as devoid of people, of a sudden, as Stonehenge.

Five minutes more, Lewrie swore, pulling out his watch in spite of his best intentions to appear calm and unruffled. The boats would be back alongside, the people aboard, and he could quit this horrible place. And he didn't much care if those three tartanes were full of gold bullion. He didn't much care for the taste in his mouth.

"All well, Sergeant Bootheby?" he asked, as the last Marines and sailors gained the gangway, and the boats were led astern for towing once more.

"Not a scratch, sir!" Bootheby boasted, his grizzled bear-face glowing with pleasure in a soldier's proper job well done. "And thank you, Captain sir! From me and all the lads. That were a rare treat, sir. Anytime, sir. We're ready, anytime."

"Damn' well done, Sergeant, and aye, I'll keep that in mind," Lewrie promised, smiling now that they could depart. "Mister Buchanon? Hands to sheets and halliards. Hands to the braces. Get sail on her, and get us underway. Once around the point, and well offshore, set a course for Vado Bay."

"With pleasure, sir," Buchanon agreed, working his mouth as if he'd been chewing on something disagreeable, too.

CHAPTER 4

Once well out to sea and headed east, shepherding their prizes, Lewrie had hoisted "Captain Repair on Board" to summon Knolles, so he could write his report on the action. To their surprise, Knolles had fetched along a French prisoner of war, a surly, coldly sneering lout in a midshipman's uniform that was a very tight fit, so bad that he appeared as if he'd stripped a much shorter and slenderer lad for his clothes; all out at the elbows and wrists, breeches that buckled up above his knees-had they buckled at all. A tall and lanky thatch-hair, who wore it long and un-clubbed to either side of his face, like a parted curtain. Midshipman Jules Hainaut altogether resembled a very dim-witted peasant, just off the turnip wagon, who'd been clad in some cast-off theatrical costume as a jape.

"Speaks damn-all English, of course, sir," Lieutenant Knolles said with an apologetic shrug. "And only a word or two of Italian… those mostly food, drink, or something to do with whores… so Mister Mountjoy's skills as a linguist might not avail, either. He's French, I've determined… but from where, God only knows, sir. He's no French I ever learned. A Parisian would send him to the guillotine for bad pronunciation."

"However did you catch him, Mister Knolles?" Lewrie asked.

"He was aboard the largest tartane, sir… the armed one. Popped off with a brace of horse pistols, missed by a mile, and dropped to the deck when Cony shot back at him." Knolles laughed easily, savoring his small triumph at the quayside. "Rather clumsily, at that."

"So the Frog Committee for Public Safety, or Directory," Lewrie said, chuckling, "appears to have their own 'Bad Bargains,' as does our King?" "Aye, sir," Knolles agreed.

"Now, the prizes, Mister Knolles!" Lewrie urged, turning to more rewarding thoughts, and dismissing the French midshipman immediately.

"Lord, sir!" Knolles exclaimed. "Arms, uniforms, boots, packs… everything to equip and feed, and field two regiments. The smaller tartanes are Savoian, I've determined. The larger one is French. She carries some four-pounders, swivels, and a pair of twelve-pounder French-cast carronades, sir. Rather clever mounting, fore-and-aft, in the middle of the forecastle and at the taffrail. The slide-carriages are built atop a round wood platform, which can point in about three-quarters of a full circle. Quite ingenious, really. Pinned through the deck just like a sea-mortar platform. On a small vessel, without a lot of standing rigging to impede one's aim, sir, well…! She could employ them even closing or fleeing, on a bow-and-quarter line." "And her cargo?" Lewrie pressed.

"Powder, made cartouches, cartridge paper, tents and blankets, mostly, sir. She escorted the others to Bordighera. I got that much from our French mute. But her main load was a company of French infantry, to do the training, sir. Half of that lot you erased on the shore road. They were raising at least one Savoian regiment of volunteers, Captain. With hopes of another, do you see." Knolles crowed himself. "And we put paid to that scheme, sir!"

"But her crew?" Lewrie wondered aloud. "Where'd they gone when we closed them? They could have given you one hell of a scrap."

"Oh, them, sir." Knolles sneered. "Savoians, too, for the most part. Fisherman and such, 'pressed' into French service. They offered a joining bounty, some fraternity cant… and gaol as the other option, if they didn't, uhm… willingly volunteer, sir. Even our lout yonder thinks them scum. Scampered off, soon as we sailed in, leaving their Frog masters to do the honorable thing."

"Well, we've had ourselves quite a productive morning, Mister Knolles." Lewrie grinned. "And hurt the French cause, no end. Your part in it was gallantly carried, and I'll stress that in my report."