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Captain Pomfret shouted that over to the frigate, then frowned over the reply. “They say their steering’s gone, Captain Lewrie, and are unable. They…” He paused to listen to further shouts. “They say they will take in all sail, but they will need assistance to set things back in order.”
“Very well,” Lewrie said with a weary sigh, “I’ll have the Carpenter and his crew, the Bosun and his Mate, the Sailmaker and his Mate, and a working-party of topmen, with some strong-backed Landsmen, board her, along with two files of Marines.”
“Aye, sir,” Westcott said, “I’ll see it organised, directly.”
“Best include Mister Snelling and his Surgeon’s Mates, too, if they can be spared from tending our own wounded,” Lewrie added. “How many of ours are down?”
“Ehm, seven dead and nineteen wounded, sir,” Westcott grimly toted up. “Amazing, really.”
Lewrie leaned far out over the poop deck bulwarks to survey the engaged side of his ship, noting the shot holes, the places where enemy roundshot had lodged when they failed to penetrate, and the dents in the stout oak scantlings where balls had struck but bounced off. The order for Secure From Quarters had been piped, and the muzzles of the guns were jerking back in-board, and those ports that had survived were being lowered. He was amazed, and grateful, that all those hits that should have filled his gun decks with swarms of splinters had not scythed down dozens more of his men!
“Put Mister Harcourt and Mister Elmes to our own repairs, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered, then shambled loose-hipped down the ladderway to the quarterdeck, strongly desiring a sit-down, perhaps even a lie-down, and a pint of small-beer. His throat was parched and raspy from shouting orders, his leg, which he had thought completely healed, was faintly aching, and he was suddenly bone-weary and drooping in the lassitude which always seemed to overtake him after a long, hard fight. His head was nodding, and it was hard for him to keep his eyes open.
“A splendid victory, if I may say so, Captain Lewrie,” Pomfret congratulated. “Not that I know much of naval battles. Even taking a spectator’s part in one still leaves me full of questions.”
“Splendid?” Lewrie responded, shrugging. “I’ll have t’take your word for that, Captain Pomfret.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Lewrie had ordered his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair fetched up to the poop deck, and had taken himself a long, restoring nap, oblivious for the better part of an hour to the thuds, bangs, and screechings of saws as Sapphire’s damage was seen to sufficient for a safe return to Gibraltar. He was wakened by a wet nose, then a wet tongue, and some wee, tentative “wakey-wakey” woofs from Bisquit, who had gotten over his terror of loud gunfire and was seeking comfort and attention to acknowledge him, and give him pets.
He cossetted the dog for a few minutes, then got to his feet, a bit stiff and sore, but well-rested, had several dips of water from the nearest scuttle-butt, and returned to duty.
“Mister Snelling and the Spanish Surgeon and their Mates have had their hands full, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported, shuffling through a sheaf of notes he’d made. “There were nigh three hundred men in San Pedro’s crew, and we’ve found nearly ninety of them dead, with over an hundred men wounded.” That drew an amazed whistle from Lewrie. “Her captain and two of her other officers are among the slain. Half her larboard guns are dis-mounted, carriages shattered, and one burst. That explains the flash and smoke we saw, sir. We’ve rigged a spare spanker to the stump of her mizen, and cut away and jettisoned everything that got shot off … they had plenty of spare spars, so we can get tops’ls up, and we can replace her fore course and main course. All in all, she can be got under way by dusk. Her jib boom’s dicey-looking, but it’ll take a foresail or two, for balance on the helm, which we’ve re-roved, so she’ll steer … after a fashion.”
“Want her, Geoffrey?” Lewrie asked. “If only for a time?”
“They don’t award Fifth Rates to Lieutenants, or Commanders,” Westcott laughed off. “Better you assign Harcourt the chore, again. If the Gibraltar dockyards can set her right, and she’s off for home, let him take the chance of re-assignment.”
“But, if Admiralty makes him a Commander, not you … sooner or later, you must be promoted,” Lewrie protested. “You’ve more than earned it.”
“Still trying to get rid of me?” Westcott scoffed. “That hurts!”
“You’d rather stay and be amused by my foolishness?” Lewrie asked with a brow up.
“Oh, something like that,” Westcott replied, with a grin and a shrug. “By the by, the other frigate is the San Pablo, and they were sister ships, and have always worked together since they were put in commission two years ago, sir. Saints Peter and Paul? She’s still in sight, off to the Nor’east, about six or seven miles away, barely making steerage way.”
“Hmm, let’s go after her, and make it a clean sweep,” Lewrie decided of a sudden. “God knows we could use the prize money, whenever that comes due. Our prisoners aboard the San Pedro are well in hand?”
“All Spanish arms, even personal knives, are secured, and the spirits stores are well-guarded,” Westcott told him. “Those still on their feet we’ve herded round the mainmast, now the heavy work’s done, so I should assume so. We’ve three files of Marines aboard her, to boot, under Lieutenant Roe.”
“We’ll gamble, then, and go after the other,” Lewrie ordered. “Get us under way to the Nor’east, Mister Westcott.”
“Aye aye, sir!” was the eager, hungry reply.
* * *
HMS Sapphire had hardly begun to sail after the San Pablo when urgent cries came from the lookouts aloft. “Th’ Chase is rollin’ on her beam ends! Deck, there! Th’ Chase looks t’be sinkin’!”
“Clap on sail, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped.
Lewrie went up to the poop deck and raised his telescope. It was a much better vantage point than his old practice of scaling the mainmast shrouds almost to the cat-harpings, and even suited his lazy nature!
“Damme, she’s goin’!” he muttered.
The frigate’s masts were canted far over to larboard, and she looked very low in the water, with the sea breaking mildly just under her line of gun-ports though he could see the coppering tacked to her stern, as if she was also down by the head with her stern cocked up. Looking closer, he could make out weak streams of water gushing from her, as if her sailors were flailing away madly at her pumps, but it seemed a losing fight.
“Cast of the log!” he demanded.
“Seven and a half knots, sir!” Midshipman Griffin shouted back after a long minute to let the log-line run and be pinched after the sand ran out of a minute glass.
We’ll be too late, Lewrie thought; Those poor buggers.
Time out of mind, since Tudor days, England and Spain had detested each other, and it was natural to loathe the Dons. When engaged at war with them, in the heat of battle at close broadsides or teeth-to-teeth with crossed blades, killing them any way possible without a thought and exulting in their slaughter bothered good Englishmen no more than piling up dead rabbits, or a terrier’s kills in a rat pit.
Helpless sailors of any nation, though … men who risked the sea and its perils, and who were suffering a fate that could befall any British sailor, if his luck ran out, that was another matter.
It would take Sapphire the better part of an hour to reach the stricken frigate, and she would slip beneath the waves long before, no matter what frantic efforts the Spanish could do to prolong the inevitable.
Six miles off, and Lewrie could see what was left of her upperworks falling free over her larboard side as her sailors chopped, cut, and axed away everything standing above her fighting tops to ease the weight that was dragging her over. For a short, hopeful moment, she did come a bit more upright, but those shot holes that had been blown into her a little below the waterline continued to flood her i