The French Admiral by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788632065
Publisher: Canelo Books
Published: 2019-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

At first light Alan called his gunners to quarters to stand by their guns and parapets. He kept his blanket over his shoulders to ward off the early morning chill and joined them from the trench in which he had tried to rest during the night.

From their eastern wall he could see the Star Redoubt, not much pummeled and still flying a French flag, and the huge battery further west. With a glass he could see that the positions on the Gloucester side had gotten the treatment, too, but not as heavily. Those positions had not changed much.

The town, though, had suffered from the shelling, and crushed buildings showed like newly missing teeth from the order of the day before. The fires had burned out and a haze of sour smoke lay over the entire encampment, thick with the stench of charred wood and expended gunpowder.

Going on tour along the north and west walls, Alan could see that there was nothing to their fronts. The redans guarding the road into town were still there, as were the ramparts, battered but still whole, and the fields before their positions were empty of threat. Nothing stirred in the ravines of the creek, and not a bird fluttered in the woods.

“Knatchbull, see to breakfast,” he said upon returning.

“We’re a might short, sir,” Knatchbull told him. “Nought but gruel an’ some biscuit, an’ this ain’t no Banyan Day, Mister Lewrie.”

“Nothing left from supper?”

“Nossir, they ain’t.” Knatchbull was almost accusatory.

“Send two men back for meat, then. Enough for the slaves, too.”

“Ain’t none o’ ours, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull complained.

“By God, they stood by as scared as the rest of us, and if they serve powder and shot to my guns, they are ours, even if they were creatures from a Swift novel,” Alan snarled, too testy and exhausted with a night of fear to be kind. “Feed ’em. Ration for a half mess.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Knatchbull quavered, never having seen Lewrie on any sort of tear against another man. He had been too junior, too hard pressed himself by the officers and warrants in Desperate, but now Lewrie had the look of a quarterdeck officer; the grime of the night did not improve his looks much, either.

Knatchbull returned half an hour later with a sack filled with meat, two four-pound pieces to be shared out by the two gun crews, another four-pound piece for Alan, Knatchbull, Cony, and the four remaining blacks.

“’Tis horse, Mister Lewrie,” Knatchbull apologized. “They’s shorta salt beef ’r pork. Ain’t never eat horse afore.”

“Ever go to a two-penny ordinary in London?” Alan teased.

“Aye, sir.”

“Then you probably have eaten horse, and in worse shape than any you’ll sink your teeth into today.” Alan laughed. “Boil it up.”

“Yer coffee, Mister Lewrie,” Cony said, seeming to pop up out of the ground with a steaming mug in his hands. It had been battered in the bombardment, but Alan recognized it from the house.

“Goddamn my eyes, Cony, this ain’t Scotch coffee!” Alan said, marveling at the first sip.

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