Guns fell silent, musketry winked out. All that could be heard for a time was the whooshing, crackling distant roar of a monumental fire that threatened to devour the entire city of Toulon, the rush of wind as it was drawn in to feed the flames. The fireship Vulcan was a torch put to the closely packed French ships of the line, laid across their sterns to set them alight. From the aftermost corner of the starboard quarterdeck, they could see rigging and yards aflame.
They should have been preparing to get underway, but the sight of an entire navy being burned was too besotting. Gradually, the blazing fireball subsided, and smoke occulted their view, lit only with sullen smoulderings at the base of the smoke clouds. Yet as the light faded, the French guns opened fire once more.
"Well, then," Lewrie said, uselessly. "Mister Porter? Do you pipe 'All-Hands.' Soldiers to the capstans, topmen prepare to lay aloft, trice up, and lay out to make sail."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
Soldiers and civilians breasted to the bars, began to trudge in circles-pawls began to chunk and clack in the well-greased capstans as the lighter messenger lines wound in, dragging the heavy hawsers to which they'd been nippered.
BARR-ROOOOMMMMM!
Another huge explosion, perhaps even larger than the first, hot wind coming from astern suddenly, shock waves rushing across the Great Road! Radical not only shivered this time, she heeled to starboard to the force of the explosion, rocked and dipped her bows!
Lewrie didn't think that'un had been planned, exactly. What in the world, once the arsenals were gone, contained that much powder? A pair of prizes, Iris and Montreal, had been filled with the gunpowder garnered from the French fleet and the Poudriиre, the mills. But they were to have been sunk. Surely, no one in their right minds would fire them… would they? Thousands of barrels-not pounds of powder-barrels of gunpowder! It was the largest blast he could ever imagine.
"Short stays, sir!" Cony howled from the foc's'le, by the bower catheads. "Heave, you lubbers!" Gracey goaded the refugee landsmen.
Up and down, the bower cable bow-taut. A last heavy-heave and the anchor broke free of the holding ground. Pawls clattered like the rapid clopping of a trotting horse.
"Aloft! Let fall! Foc's'le! Haul away the inner jib!"
A land breeze, one of man's devising, the outrush of the fires, found her canvas; fore and main course, fore-tops'l, spanker and inner jib, enough to give her steerageway. Ebony waters scintillating with flame points chattered and gurgled about her cutwater, under her forefoot. Two knots at best she made, ghosting past Batterie la Croix and the headland bluffs, her shadow flickering like an errant moth's on the bare, crumbly land face. Out due east'rd to the Bay of Toulon, aiming at Cape de la Garonne, which could almost be seen as clear as daylight, ruddy-hued as twilight sunshine ahead. And an amber and rose red glow astern, spreading and growing, an illuminated, tinted woodcut from some Germanic artist's medieval Hell. Or a glimpse down a volcano's seething throat.
Round Cape Sepet, sheering close as she dared to the shoals, clear of the ordered files of warships farther out in the channel as they made their southing, turning each in succession, in line-ahead, hulls gleaming with ruddy, Unseeded sheens, buff gunwales bright as ivory, sails umber with the colours of a false sunset.
A sea breeze, then. A puff on the cheek, a luffing aloft, canvas drumming and fluttering. Squeals from blocks and parrels, as yards were braced about, pivoting on the masts, as sails filled on the opposite tack.
'"Vast heaving, and… Belay! Well, the braces, well, the sheets! Do you hear, there! Larboard, tail onto the lift Unes!"
Radical lifted her bows to the first scend of the proper sea, did a slow and regal roU to the first rollers that kissed her hull, a little forward of abeam on her larboard side. Creaking and groaning, timbers in adjustment, masts and stays taking a new strain as a second nightfaU of 18 December 1793 found her. Stars appeared overhead, to windward and the south, thin rags of cloud far off simmered pale and indistinct and blue white. To the north, astern, they were red. Above Cape Sepet and the peninsula, there was red and amber, a paU which cut off stariight. And the Signals Cross stood on the highest hiU, silhouetted on what appeared to be a tropical sunset, as stark as His on Golgotha.
"Well, the lifts, Mister Porter. Belay," Lewrie shouted down to his hands. He walked back from the quarter-deck nettings to the wheel, looking at the malevolence brewing astern like a witch's cauldron, glad to be away in one piece. To where, he had no idea, after getting this temporary command to Gibraltar. Turning his back on their doomed adventure, he faced forrud, leaned over to peer into the compass bowl.
"Quartermaster, steer sou-sou'west. Give nothing to leeward."
"Sou-sou'west it be, sir. Nothin' t'loo'rd."
It was dark before their bows, and a cold sea guttered and danced on the faint starlight. Wind-rush across the decks, a gentle keening in the shrouds and running rigging. A weary, deliberate movement beneath his feet as Radical conformed to winds and sea. The sluicing of ocean along her sides, under her quarter, a peaceful, soporific sighing.
The way things ought to be, Lewrie thought; for a time at least, it was peaceful. After such a dispiriting defeat.
Radical was weeded worse than they had thought. She could not, for all her elegant length of waterUne or finely moulded entry, make a goodly way. Weed, barnacles, algae-like green scum-a peek overside from the quarterdeck, hanging from the larboard mizzen chains, on the windward side, showed that her quick-work, which should have been smooth-joined copper and paint, was erose and irregular with Nature's seagoing pests. Weed waved like discarded rope in clumpy garlands up to three feet long. And all of it, save for the scum which thinned by morning of the 20th and no longer sloughed off as appetising morsels for the myriad of sea birds which swirled and mewed in her wake, was so firmly attached that a seething run with sails "set all to the royals" would not have scrubbed even a portion of it off.
A ship as long as Radical, with 100 feet of keel and waterUne, should have logged nearly ten knots under plain sail; they were lucky to have averaged six. And the weather had been just boisterous enough to force them to shorten sail-first reefs in fore and main courses, second reefs in fore, main and mizzen tops'ls; forget setting stays'ls 'tween the masts, or freeing the gasketed t'gallants. They were too short-handed.
Plus, there were the unpredictably perverse currents in the Golfe du Lion, then there were fluky wind-shifts which had them at times close-hauled, beating into weather to make their southing, time lost in tacking to keep other ships in sight… neither Lewrie nor de Crillart could believe they'd made more than 180 miles to the good since leaving Toulon.
As for determining position, the skies had gloomed up again after dawn of the 19th, making noon sun sights impossible, and had stayed grey and overcast, rendering lunar or stellar sights hopeless, too. They'd fallen back on the old, and inaccurate, Dead Reckoning-by Guess and by God-estimating progress on casts of the knot-log.
The 19th hadn't been so worrisome, since there were many others in company, and if they followed along like lambs tagging after the bellwether, they couldn't go very far wrong. So many captains and sailing masters, all slowly trundling along in the same direction simply had to know where they were headed.
By dawn of the 20th, though, they were almost alone. Slow the line-of-battle ships might be, sailing in rigid order, luffing or backing tops'ls to keep their ordained separation in line-ahead. But they were faster, manned well enough to take advantage of wind shifts.
There were two merchantmen astern about two miles off, a brace of hired transports crammed with refugees, wounded or troops, straining to keep up, flying more sail than the weather would really allow. Off to leeward on their starboard bows was another transport, an unarmed hired horse transport, with people in her stalls instead of chargers. Only one more ship was in sight, far ahead, hull down with only tops'ls and a lone t'gallant showing.
Making matters even worse, now Radical was upon the open sea, her seams were working worse than they'd feared, requiring a full hour at the chain pumps every six, instead of eight. Their music to celebrate what looked to be a Christmas Day at sea would be the mournful clank and suck of the pumps, and the irregular spurting gurgle of flood-water going overside.
Could be worse, Lewrie reassured himself at least once an hour-worse things happen at sea, right? Count your blessings! Two more days and we'll be in sight of Minorca, the Spanish Balearics. Fall off loo'rd and we're between them and the Spanish coast. Seamarks and charted positions again. Fishing ports to squeeze into, if the flooding gets bad. Maybe not Gibraltar, but… Another blessing, it's warmer. Clouds, or heading south… and this sou'easter out of Africa. And it isn't raining. Five more days, maybe, to Gibraltar? Money-draught from Courts' and Mister Mountjoy… letters from Caroline, new clothes and sea-chest…
A slight change in Radical's movements, a soughing wallow, with a slower rise of her bows to the next quartering sea. He looked aloft to see the coach whip of her pendant change angle, curl and falter. A change in the wind, not for the good, damnit!
"Pardon, mon capitaine," Lieutenant de Crillart said, coming up to him at the windward railings. "Ze wind eez drop, an' back un point astern. We… shake out… meezen tops'l reef? Main course reef? I 'ave you' permission?"
"Yes, Charles. Carry on." Lewrie smiled. Another blessing, he thought; to have at least one experienced watch officer aboard to share the quarterdeck with him, though they were forced to stand "watch-and-watch" of four hours each. Definitely not a blessing, that schedule-trying to eat, nap, scrub up… and pay proper attention to Phoebe, all in a mere four hours. Porter and Spendlove, to make a third? Hmm.
Definitely a blessing, though: a girl willing to accommodate herself to his horrid back-to-back hours, affectionate enough to be supportive in those times when their privacy was interrupted. And wit enough to understand that he had two mistresses, one infinitely demanding, to which she must take a back pew for a time.
Precious few able seamen aloft, topmen laying out to let fall a line of reef-points. Landsmen and civilian volunteers on the gangways, tending the braces, in the waist easing clews, hauling on sheets. For a moment he wished he could dare let fall the t'gallants, but… should it come a blow, and in the Mediterranean there was little time before squalls struck, little warning. The wind was already trending more easterly. Another fierce Levanter on its way? No, they were doing the best they could, with what little they had left to work with. He'd have to swallow his impatience and tread on the side of caution. Overpowered by a squall, they could lose the upper masts in a twinkling, broach her to, roll her on her beam-ends. Or be driven under as too much canvas cupped too much wind, and Radical exceeded her ultimate hull speed.
