"Know what, Captain?"
"Whether or not our guns can hurt them," Grosclaud said, and looked at the gunner.
"Open fire," he said.
* * *
"Damn," John Simpson said mildly as the Frenchman's side disappeared behind a bank of flame-swirled smoke. The range was down to no more than sixty or seventy yards, with Constitution following the other vessel around onto the same heading.
"Return fire, sir?" Halberstat asked, and Simpson nodded unhappily.
"You are authorized to fire, Captain. But let's not get carried away here. Give him one broadside from the carronades. Let's find out if he's willing to see reason after that."
"Yes, sir. One broadside," Halberstat repeated. "Pass the word to Lieutenant MacDougall," he told the signalman on the voice pipes. "One carronade broadside, only."
"One carronade broadside, only, aye, aye, sir."
Grosclaud glared at the ugly, ponderous-looking American ship. He knew he'd hit it at least a half-dozen times, but as the smoke of his own broadside drifted away, the other vessel loomed up out of the water—close aboard, now—with absolutely no sign to mark the striking of his round shot.
"Well," he started to say to Jouette, "now we know. So let's—"
The end of the world arrived before he could complete the sentence.
Constitution's guns fired.
The range was childishly short for rifled guns, but, by the same token, both the target and the firing platform were moving through the water. And no matter how calm the Bay of Kiel might seem, or even be, compared to North Sea or normal Atlantic conditions, there was wave motion to take into consideration. Railleuse had fired a sixteen-gun broadside at Constitution, and (despite Grosclaud's estimate) had scored only four hits. Constitution's gunners (despite their shoreside practice) had woefully little actual experience firing at sea. Despite the low range, despite the fact that they, unlike Railleuse's gunners actually had sights, they scored only two hits.
The effect of those two hits was somewhat different from Railleuse's four, however.
The first shell hit Railleuse between the fourth and fifth gun ports on her port side. It smashed through the thick planking, slammed across the tween-deck space, struck the foremast, and detonated. The mast shattered, a section of decking six feet by eight feet erupted upward in a hail of splinters, and shell fragments ripped through the crowded gunners, killing seven and wounding another twelve.
The second shell hit her aft, just below the level of the poop deck. It exploded in Grosclaud's sea cabin, blowing out the stern windows and reducing the captain's furniture to splinters. The helmsman staggered as the same explosion cut the linkage between the tiller bar and the whipstaff. The staff went abruptly loose in his hands, moving freely without affecting the rudder at all, and two seamen went down—one screaming; one already limp in death—as shell fragments and bits and pieces of deck blasted through them.
The sheared off foremast toppled, crashing down with all its weight of canvas and spars, taking the main topmast with it. Railleuse seemed to slow, as if she'd dropped anchor, when the wreckage thundered into the water alongside. She pivoted around the sudden drag, her stern pushing away from the wind, and there was nothing at all the helmsman could do about it.
Grosclaud felt as if someone had just hit him across the bottoms of his feet with a club. He heard the screams of maimed and wounded men, saw the wreckage of rigging trailing alongside, then stiffened as he smelled wood smoke.
"Fire!" someone shouted. "Fire!"
It was the greatest fear of any wooden ship, and the captain hurled himself toward the poop deck ladder as smoke came welling up out of his own sea cabin. Other men were already racing toward the flames, some with buckets of sand, others with nothing but their bare hands. They flung themselves into the smoke, treading on still more wounded crewmen in their haste. Some hurled sand at the flames; others snatched up burning wreckage, ignoring the pain in their hands when they got too close to the flames, and hurled it through the shattered stern windows into the sea. Still others ripped off shirts, or even trousers, and used them to beat at the flames, frantic to subdue them.
"Rig hoses!" Simpson snapped. "Captain Halberstat, circle around and stand by to go alongside!"
Quick responses came back, but Simpson was already tearing at the latches, hurling the bridge door open and dashing back out onto it with his bullhorn. None of the abruptly crippled Railleuse's guns would bear on Constitution, but he was well aware that they were close enough for even a seventeenth-century matchlock musketeer to get lucky.