The Invasion Year (51 page)

“In mid-Channel ’twixt France and Jersey, aye,” Lewrie agreed. “Does this scant breeze allow, we might bear a point more Westerly. I wouldn’t want t’run her too close to Cape Carteret, and on Due North, there’s Cape de la Hague beyond that.”

He looked up to sniff the air and peer about, then returned to the chart. “This
has
t’burn off, say, by Four Bells of the Forenoon and the winds’ll surely shift back from somewhere in the West, so—”

“Harkee, sir!” Mr. Caldwell barked. “Did any of you hear that?”

“Hear what, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie asked, puzzled.

“I did, sir!” Midshipman Munsell piped up. “Over yonder?” the younker said, pointing out to starboard, his mouth agape and his eyes blared in alarm.

Moo-oo-wa!

“Sea-monsters?” Quartermaster’s Mate Malin whispered to another fellow manning the helm.

“Hist!” Quartermaster Rhys snapped back.

Moo-oo-wa!
came from the fog, plaintive and hackle-raising eerie, answered a moment later by a second, then a third, and a fourth further off and fainter!

If any
seals
turn up, we’ll tow the ship out of here!
Lewrie thought;
That’s just … spooky!

“Sea cows?” Midshipman Munsell shudderingly asked.

“Fog horns!” the Sailing Master exclaimed. “Trumpets of some kind, or someone yelling through speaking-trumpets.”

“Where away?” Lewrie snapped, dreading the chance that there were what sounded like four
gunboats
out there, trying to find each other.

Moo-wa!

“There, sir!” Munsell cried, pointing off the starboard quarter. “I think.”

Moo-wa!
And that one sounded as if it was out to larboard, out to sea of them! As the other fog horns mournfully lowed, Lt. Westcott pointed at one, and Caldwell at yet another, his arms out-stretched to encompass a section of the fog, swivelling his head and hands like an errant compass needle as his best estimate.

“Sir! Sir!” Midshipman Munsell was crying, hopping on his toes in urgency. “I think I can see a
light
out there, to starboard, where the loudest one was!” Without being ordered, Munsell sprang into the main-mast shrouds and scrambled up the rat-lines a few feet. “
There,
sir! I
do
see a light, a tiny one!”

Lewrie and the others peered out to find it on their own.

“Waving back and forth … hand-held?” Lt. Westcott speculated. “Like someone in a small boat?”

“A fleet of fishermen, perhaps,” Mr. Caldwell mused aloud.

So long as they ain’t gunboats!
Lewrie thought.

“This far off the coast, sir?” Westcott countered. “In such a flat calm, with no wind? Were they fishing boats, they would have had to set out from Coutances or some other wee port
very
early last night to be caught by this fog.”

“In their home waters they know best?” Lewrie scoffed. “I don’t think French fishermen’d dare come out this far, not since the war reopened. Our close blockade keeps ’em a lot nearer port, as we saw in the Gulf of Saint Malo. It
does
look like a hand-held lanthorn, don’t it? So whatever sort o’ boat it is, it can’t be all that large.”

Lewrie gave it a long think, then went to the break of the quarterdeck to look down into the be-fogged waist of the ship where his men sat round the guns, ready to spring into action when ordered.

“Mister Merriman,” he called down, “see Bosun Sprague and assemble an armed boat crew. Mister Simcock?” he said to their officer of Marines, who had been idly pacing the starboard gangway behind the file of a dozen Marines posted by the bulwarks and rolled hammock nettings. “I’d admire some of your men to go with Mister Merriman to see just what’s out there, and board it, if it’s manageable.”

“
Very
good, sir!” Lt. Simcock replied, stiffening to attention and beaming at a chance to do something.

“May I have Cox’n Desmond and your boat crew, sir?” Lt. Merriman asked. At Lewrie’s emphatic nod, the Third Lieutenant turned about to point at Desmond, Furfy, and the rest, summoning them to the gangway and the starboard entry-port. “I’ll take one of the towed barges, sir, so we’ll have room enough for the ‘lobsterbacks.’ ”

“Very good,” Lewrie agreed. “Make sure you’ve a boat compass, and mark your reciprocal course. We’re not goin’ anywhere quickly, so we should be easy to find,” he japed.

Moo-wa!
wailed from larboard, making Lewrie swivel his head to find her in the impenetrable banks of fog, and think that the source of that eldritch hooting
might
lay two points or more forward of abeam to
Reliant. In for a penny, in for a pound,
he thought.

“Mister Houghton,” he called to their oldest Midshipman, “I wish you to take the second barge, and some Marines, and seek out the boat out yonder,” he ordered, pointing off in the general direction that his ears had determined, repeating his warning to take a good boat compass.

Moo-wa!
sounded from larboard again, in answer to a thin chorus of horn-amplified hoots very far out to starboard.
Reliant
was in the middle of the mysterious boats, slowly ghosting forward on the scanty wind. If the so-far-unseen boats were small fishing boats, as Mister Caldwell first supposed, Lewrie could not imagine them being much over thirty feet in length, with only a single lug-sail. His frigate sported
acres
of canvas aloft in comparison, and, once such a large ship got
any
way upon her, her weight and much longer hull allowed her to coast onward, when smaller boats would wallow to a stop and require a stouter wind to get moving once more. They might truly be becalmed and helpless … whatever they were!

Not gunboats, though, no gunboats, pray Jesus!
Lewrie thought.

Moo-wa!
and
Hoo!
from all quarters, some close, most distant and eerie, and Lewrie took note of his idle gunners looking at each other uneasily, a few of the ship’s boys who crouched down the centreline of the waist between the guns, leather-cased powder cartridges in their hands, peering about wide-eyed in fear.

“It ain’t whales, lads, and it ain’t sea-monsters,” Lewrie told them as loud as he dared. “They’re Frog fishermen, most-like, lost in the fog, and they haven’t a clue that
Reliant
’s the fox in the chicken coop!”

That seemed to satisfy most of the crew, though not all.

“Both the barges are away, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported. “Mister Houghton’s is almost out of sight, not a musket-shot off, and the other is already swallowed up. Wish you’d have sent me, sir,” he added.

“Are they gunboats, I need you here, sir,” Lewrie said. “If we end up seizing a couple of fishing smacks, there’s not enough glory in ’em. Why, Mister Westcott?” Lewrie posed with a grin. “Are ye in need of favourable notice with Admiralty? One of your
amours
isn’t some admiral’s daughter, is she?”

“Frankly, sir, but for the chance to be blown sky-high by one of our bloody torpedo contraptions, it’s been a dull Summer,” Lt. Westcott replied. “Looking for a bit of honest excitement was my desire.”

“Captain Speaks
will
be returning with a fresh lot of catamaran torpedoes,” Lewrie pointed out. “Perhaps we’ll actually employ ’em on the French … under return fire and at close range. Be careful what you ask for, Mister Westcott.
There’s
some honest excitement for you!”

“Just so long as we
are
in action, sir,” Westcott told him with a hungry grin and a flash of his teeth.

Lewrie paced back to the binnacle cabinet, with his First Lieutenant dutifully following him.

“We’re making two and a half knots, sir, barely,” Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, reported, his coat damp from supervising the cast of the log. “I was wondering about what you said, sir … that the local French fishermen would stay closer to shore, and no stiff wind could’ve blown them this far out where they might run into some of our ships on close blockade?”

“Aye, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie prompted, feeling a shiver that he might be wrong in thinking that they had blundered into only small boats. He was
used
to being wrong!

“Might the French have tried to sneak a convoy of invasion boats up the coast, and got caught the same as us in this odd turn of the weather?” Mr. Caldwell posed. “There’s a good, sheltered inlet South of us by Avranches and Saint Hilaire,” he said, referring to the chart for a moment. “Were they building
caïques
and such in there, they might have thought to sneak them as far as Cherbourg in one night.”

“And if they are a convoy of invasion craft, they might have an escort or two, is what you’re thinking?” Lewrie asked him, feeling yet another shiver of dread.

“Do we blunder up close to one, sir, perhaps they’ll take us for one of their big, three-masted
prames,
” Lt. Westcott said, shrugging.

Moo-wa!
lowed from larboard once again, sounding much closer to them than before, followed by a thin voice!

“Quelq’un là-bas?… Allô?”

“Houghton’s boat must be upon it, whatever it is!” Lt. Westcott snapped, going to the larboard side in more haste than officers of the Royal Navy usually displayed. “French, for certain, by God!”

“Qui va là?”
that distant voice came again, caution or alarm in its tone.
“Qui vive?”
more sharply and urgent.

That demand was answered by a volley of musket shots, soft pops, and cracks muffled by the fog, from Midshipman Houghton’s men or the French they could not tell, but there came a human wail of surprise or pain, and thin cheers!

“Whatever it is, it sounds as if Mister Houghton thinks he can board it and take it, sir!” Westcott called over his shoulder. Even as he turned back to look out-board, there came a few more muffled cracks too soft for muskets; it sounded as if Houghton, his sailors, and the Marines might actually be aboard and close enough for pistol-shots!

“Dear Lord, if they’ve troops aboard!” Mr. Caldwell cautioned.

“Doesn’t sound like it,” Lewrie said after listening intently for more clues. There were no more shots, and only one more chorus of cheers, triumphant sounds, before the day went still once more, and he could not tell if it was British cheers, or from the French, who might have out-manned, swarmed, and over-awed Midshipman Houghton’s party to take them all prisoner. All Lewrie could hear was the groans from the barely swaying masts, the tilting yards, and
Reliant
’s hull timbers.

“
More
shooting, sir, from starboard!” the Sailing Master yelled. “Lieutenant Merriman’s at it!”

“
Somethin’
orf th’ starb’d bows!” a lookout shouted from the forecastle. With the fog so thick, they had kept night-time deck lookouts posted as well as the day lookouts placed high aloft in the top-masts. “Strange boat t’starb’d …
close aboard
!”

It took a few more seconds for that strange boat to appear to the people on the quarterdeck. First there was nothing but whiteness and fog, then a faint and darker shadowy bulk that magically materialised, only slowly taking solid form.

“What the Devil is
that
?” the Sailing Master barked as the oddity fully emerged.

Salvation from that threatened court-martial?
Lewrie thought in sudden glee.

The French boat looked to be no further off than a long musket-shot, a two-masted
thing
with its lug-sails and jibs hanging limp and the booms sweeping uselessly to either beam. It resembled an inverted serving platter or shallow soup tureen, with a long rectangular box on its back that ran down the centreline, from the small cockpit to the rhino-like proboscis in the bow.

“A
beetle
?” Lt. Westcott deemed it, sounding awed. That was a fair-enough first guess, for near its forward third there were wide-bladed oars jutting to either side, at least half a dozen on the larboard side that faced them, and they were being worked like scoops to crawl it forward, just like a water-beetle that had lost most of its legs!

“Qui vive? Heu, mort de ma vie!”
the lone Frenchman aft at the thing’s helm wailed. Just aft of him at its taffrail stood a staff, from which a small French Tricolour windlessly dangled.