Devil's Due (Destroyermen #12)(50)
The Dom ship grew larger, longer, turning quickly. Even before she had a chance to settle, a long, rolling broadside, starting aft and moving forward, erupted from her side, sending white smoke gushing over and away. Most of the big twenty-four-pound balls went high, shivering Donaghey’s sails and sending blocks racing down severed halyards to crash on deck. A fair number probably missed completely. One hit the muzzle of the portside chaser, shattering, and flipped the gun on its side. Screams arose on the fo’c’sle as ’Cats were crushed by the gun or flayed by fragments of the iron ball. More splinters sprayed aft from the shattered boat on the hatch, one hitting Greg’s helmet that he’d providentially dipped. A couple crashed into the hull forward, shaking the entire ship. Then it was over.
“Starboard battery, stand by!” Greg roared. “Helm,” he shouted, glancing at the wheel—only to see the ’Cat there was down, eyes clenched shut in agony, teeth showing bright. Something had fallen on him, probably breaking his collarbone. But the Republic sailing master, Leutnant Koor-Susk, had taken his place. “Helm,” Greg repeated, “come left to three two zero! Execute! Make ready, Mr. Smith!” he called upward. “Commence firing at your discretion!”
“Range four-fifty,” Smitty called down, estimating what it would be when Donaghey finished her turn. “Five degrees left!” The call was repeated and handspikes shifted guns to match the marks on the backs of the carriages with the ones on deck. “Prime!” Vents were pierced and primers inserted.
“Clear!” the gunners shouted as their crews stepped away.
“All clear!” cried Donaghey’s first lieutenant, Mak-Araa. “Baattery is ready!”
All this was accomplished in seconds, before Donaghey’s guns would even bear. Now the turn was complete and Koor called that the rudder was amidships. “Firing!” Smitty warned, staring at the plumb bob in the box. Just before it swung across the mark beneath it, he closed the firing switch. Electricity raced down the wires, igniting the primers in the vents, and the ship heaved as all twelve of Donaghey’s starboard eighteen-pounders spat orange flame and bright smoke simultaneously, backed by two twelve-pounders in rapid succession. There followed the ripping-sheet sound of heavy projectiles in flight, cut off by a staccato thunder of impacts. Younglings, holding tubular pass boxes and watching from the comparative safety of the companionways, erupted from below and ran to their appointed guns. Only Smitty, above the great cloud of smoke, could see the results, and he quickly called corrections. In fewer than forty seconds, Lieutenant Mak yelled, “All clear. Baattery is ready!” once again. Again, Smitty roared that he was firing. Another concussive blast shook the ship and shot pounded the Dom.
“Load case shot!” Greg shouted, even while the enemy remained invisible beyond the dense fog bank of smoke rushing down on her. Slowly, she began to emerge as the smoke dispersed. “God almighty,” he breathed. Smitty’s range estimates had been dead-on, but he may’ve led his target a bit much. Understandable, since Donaghey had never engaged a target so closely with her new fire-control procedures in place. Not that the result was a bad thing. At least for them. And to top it off, Greg’s ship had never fired such densely patterned salvos in her life. It looked like every round had struck forward, battering three of the enemy’s gunports into one, and the few that missed the hull seemed to have struck the foremast. It was still leaning far over to windward, the stays somehow holding it, but then they began to part, whipping high in the air, and the entire thing, practically from the fo’c’sle deck, crashed over the side into the sea. Men were seen jumping in the water, and Greg wondered how long they’d last. They hadn’t seen many mountain fish, but the Atlantic seemed just as thick with other predators as elsewhere. The main topmast and topsail went with the foremast, settling like a shroud over the fo’c’sle, and the drag of the mast quickly brought the Dom ship around until she was bows on to Donaghey’s next broadside. “Belay loading case!” Greg shouted. “Those that already have, draw ’em out. Load grape! Helm, resume your original course.” He turned to Sammy. “When we’re within two hundred yards, we’ll come left again and heave to.”
“Aye, sur!”
Donaghey straightened, surging closer, then bore away once more, backing her foresails. For five long minutes, she punished the Dom frigate with grape shot, shredding fo’c’sle, sails, boats, and bodies down the length of her main deck. The forward bulkhead behind the shattered headrails became a sieve, and similar destruction must’ve been done all along the gundeck. Men taking cover behind cannon or in the waist might’ve survived the onslaught, but soon nothing moved amid the carnage they’d wrought.
“Cease firing!” Greg roared over the din, and his order quickly spread. Two more guns fired before there was silence, and Greg paced to the rail, taking a leather speaking trumpet his steward handed him. Donaghey was fewer than a hundred yards from the Dom’s sagging bowsprit now, the wind blowing her down on the helpless ship. He glanced at the water churning with blue-gold shapes, tearing at corpses floating amid smoldering clumps of wadding from his guns. The bodies had either fallen or been thrown over the side of the Dom. Not exactly flashies, he thought absently. Not as big, or quite as many as we’ll probably find in coastal waters. But just as hungry. Maybe they follow ships? He shook his head.