A King's Commander by Dewey Lambdin

breeching ropes, sure.
    â€œCease fire, Mister Bittfield! Mister Rahl? Supervise carronades on the quarterdeck. They have a greater arc of fire.”
    â€œJa, zir!” Their emigrant Prussian barked, almost clicking his heels in glee to have some noisy toys to play with a bit longer.
    And that frigate, Lewrie exulted to himself! She’ll have to fall in almost astern of me, if she wishes to continue. She stays that high up on our quarter, we’ll brush her off against the side of that last liner!
    The frigate reopened fire, with her lighter forecastle chase guns. Five- or six-pound ball went sizzling across the quarterdeck.
    â€œA little better shooting, at last,” Knolles commented. “They’re not the skillful shots their fathers were,” Lewrie agreed, with some relief.
    â€œBless me, sir,” Knolles scoffed. “They’re not the men they were two years ago!”
    The starboard quarterdeck carronades belched fire, swathing them all in powder smoke for a period, before it was wafted away to the nor’east by the light winds, before Jester sailed past her own pall on the bruised air.
    â€œ Hit, I t’ink, herr kapitan! Ja! ” Rahl delighted, watching heavy ball strike and raise a gout of splinters, dust, and oakum.
    On they stood, continuing their duel. The last French warship in the battle line was left astern, off Jester ’s starboard quarter. A run of five minutes more would give her sea room enough to come about and resume her original course of west-sou’west, with the entire Royal Navy a protective fence between her and danger.
    Gunners aft, and the after-guard, began to jeer, as the French frigate was forced to haul her wind to avoid a collision with that last, limping 3rd Rate.
    â€œFrigate, sir!” Hyde pointed out. “One of our repeating frigates, four points off the starboard bows!”
    â€œAcknowledging our private signal, sir!” Spendlove chimed in.
    â€œMister Knolles, you may secure from quarters, now,” Alan said with a great sigh of success. “Safe in Mother’s arms, from here on.”
    â€œFrench frigate is wearing about, sir.”
    Lewrie looked aft. Aye, she didn’t have room in which to tack so she was swinging broadside on to Jester ’s stern, presenting them her starboard side, to make the greater twenty-four-point circle off the wind to end up heading west, plodding along in company with the other vessels of her fleet. Deprived of her prey. Beaten.
    â€œBetter luck next time, you snail-eatin’ bastard!” Alan bellowed in triumph, cupping his hands so his words might carry. Though he doubted a shout across half-a-mile would register on French ears, it was, after all, the smug, insulting victor’s jeer—and thought—that counted!
    Uh . . . sorry I did that, he told himself at once!
    The frigate, outsailed then outshot, spent a last fit of Gallic pique upon Jester, rippling out one final, irregular broadside. A crash aft and below, as a ball scored at last, caving in the transom timbers abaft the stores rooms and officers’ quarters, a great thonk as the ball continued to carom down the length of the empty berth deck. Glass shattered as another exploded the larboard quarter-galleries— both Lewrie’s and the gunroom’s—toilets. Splashes and feathers to either beam around the stern, and a further hollow thonk and high whine as a ball ploughed a furrow down Jester ’s side.
    And Josephs, up on the bulwarks, was beheaded.
    One instant cheering and waving a fist in the air, the next he was flying, his small body flung almost amidships of the quarterdeck, minus his head, throat, and shoulders, which had been pulped into red mist by six pounds of wailing iron!
    â€œMy . . . word! ” Lieutenant Knolles gasped, as his compatriot on the bulwarks, his mate Rydell, hopped down and began shrieking utter horror, and terror. He’d escaped unscathed,