A King's Commander (8 page)

“Aye aye, sir,” Knolles responded. “Mister Bittfield?”

If
that
didn't work, next he'd try shifting all the round-shot into garlands on the larboard side, by hand, then crack the water casks and use the wash-deck pumps to “start” all that weight over the side, to lighten her. He'd heard of people jettisoning cumbersome cargo, even artillery, during a stern chase. Of course . . . most of the time, that'd been the heroic captains doing the chasing, not the chased. And the prize money afterward paid for all.

“It occurs t'me, sir . . .” Knolles began in a soft voice, minus his confident japery, and a tad shy of making a suggestion at all.

“Aye, Mister Knolles?” Alan rejoined with a smile.

“Well, Captain . . .” Knolles coughed into his fist nervously as he dared advise a senior officer. “Should we stand on, close-hauled . . . uhm . . .”

“Surely, our brief spell together, since Gibraltar, sir,” Alan chuckled to put him at his ease, “and you're still afraid I'll
bite?
Ease her a point free, is that your thinking?”

“Aye, sir!” Knolles grinned shyly. “Spin the chase out. Make her work harder for her supper.”

“An excellent idea, Mister Knolles. Very well, ease her. Wear us a point free, off the wind, so
Jester
'll
sail even flatter on her quick-work. So it takes yon Frog
another
hour to get within range-to-random shot. If you would be so kind, sir?”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Knolles replied, turning to issue orders to brace-tenders, idlers, and helm, the forecastle men who tended the jib sheets and the bosun and his mate.

No way we'd
ever
outfoot her, and cross ahead, anyway, Lewrie told 
himself. She'll be up, even if she doesn't head-reach
farther
upwind of by dusk, for certain. With the wind gauge, and us to her lee.

Jester
fell off from close-hauled to a fair wind, heading west-by-south, sometimes luffing up as the wind backed no more than half a point. She settled down with less heel to starboard, as the braces and jibs were eased a trifle, the yards swung around with the leading larboard yard-ends not quite so aligned fore-and-aft. Apparent wind eased, no longer keening through her rigging, softer on the ears, so conversations did not have to be shouted above the rushing.

“Hark'ee, sir!” Buchanon called, speaking for perhaps a second time in the last hour, as Three Bells of the Forenoon Watch chimed.

“Hmm?” Lewrie asked, wondering if there was something he had forgotten that he'd ordained to happen at half past nine a.m.

“Thunder, sir,” Buchanon oracled, sniffing at the wind with his large, crooked nose, like a fresh-awakened mastiff.

A squall line, that'd be a blessing, Alan wished; bags of rain and thunder, somewhere off to windward. Dive into it before the foe did, and tack away, leaving him to play “silly buggers” with himself.

“But, there's not a storm cloud in sight, Mister Buchanon,” he was forced to say, after a long, and hopeful, search of the horizon.

“Thunder, sir,” Buchanon insisted. “Hark'ee.”

Lewrie went up to the windward rail, left the quarterdeck to amble forrud along the larboard gangway, to get away from the noise a ship makes, or a crew makes. Something . . . but what? Once more he raised his telescope, resting it on the foremast stays, this time.

Nope, nary a smudge upwind. The southern horizon was knife-edged, now that the mists and haze had cleared. Rolly, since waves made it, but . . . was there more cloud just looming over the sea, far down sou'west? Not squall-gray or blue-gray, but . . .

Damme if it
don't
sound like thunder, he enthused; off and away . . . but a roll of thunder, nonetheless. A faint sound that was
not
the wind's flutter about his head teased at his hearing.

Or was it a devoutly wished-for fantasy?

Again came something that
might
have been, if only . . .

“Bosun Porter, pipe the ‘still'!” he snapped.

He'd served captains who did it; made their people work quiet, with pipes, halliard twitches and finger snaps as orders to the hands . . . their slaves. After
Cockerel,
a ship run dead-silent would always strike him as Devilish-queer. He'd much prefer raucous caterwauling. At least that bespoke a crew with spirit! He'd made a vow he'd never be the sort of captain who demanded the “still.” Yet, here he was . . .

Yes, it
was
thunder! Very far off, up-to-weather thunder, on the wind. “Thankee, Mister Porter, you may pipe the hands free, now,” he said, with a grin on his face. And kept that grin plastered on— looking like the cat that lapped the cream—all the way aft past the curious sailors on the gangway or below at the guns in the waist. And thinking that perhaps he owed little Josephs a lapful of gingersnaps, for whistling up a saving storm! Thinking, too, that he owed Aeolus a debt, as well. The wind-god was an old slow-coach sometimes, in dealing retribution to cocksure sailors . . . but he got there, in the end!

“Mister Buchanon is right, gentlemen,” he told the quarterdeck. “I heard thunder on the horizon. Under the horizon, to us, of yet, but . . . there is a faint smudge of
something
stormlike visible, up to weather. I'd admire we hardened up half-a-point to west-by-south, half south, so we reach it in time to befuddle yon Frog, and lose him in the squalls.”

One hour more, standing on, on
Jester
's
fair wind, and the heat of the day increasing. She began to heel a tiny bit more to starboard as the wind freshened, even with her artillery run out to balance her.

It was piping up, at last! Not gusting, never approaching any blusters, but it was rising slowly, the nearer they sailed toward the single tumulus of cloud on the sou'west horizon. And beyond the main cloud mass, there appeared more mere suggestions of clouds, fuller and more substantial than the mare's tails aloft, seductively tantalizing in round cumulous detail.

Pristine white, those clouds, though, for such a din of thunder that came faintly, but more often, under the rush-keening of the wind. No black or blue-gray hazes of an advancing storm front, no trace of an expected towering thunderhead. Nor of the vast sweep of gloom, which should be swathing half the weather horizon. Nor the flickering sizzle of lightning, which accompanied all the faint thunder-growl.

Lewrie began to get a queasy feeling, though he masked it well, by pretending to take a nap in a wood-and-canvas deck chair with wide, well-spaced feet.

“Deck, there!” the foremast lookout finally hollered. “They be
tops'ls,
on th' 'orizon! Dead on th' bows!”

“How many tops'ls?” Lieutenant Knolles shouted back, with the aid of a brass speaking trumpet, as Alan pretended to “wake.”

“Dozens, sir!” came the reply. “One point off th' larboard bow, t'
two
point off th'starb'rd!”

Lewrie arose and took a catlike stretch.

“Well, could be 'at grain convoy,” Buchanon opined. “Hun'r'ds o' ships, I heard, Mister Knolles. Indiamen with New Orleans rice . . . more with corn an' wheat from th' Chesapeake. 'Ose
Ew-
nited States of America payin' 'eir debt t'France.
And,
makin' th' Devil's own profit, I'll warrant. As arse-o'er-tit'z France's farms an' markets are since their revolution, 'tis import 'r starve this summer. Why their Navy's out . . . t' p'rtect th' food, 'r the country goes under. Sounds like we found 'em, just'z ol' Admiral Howe lit into 'em, sir!”

“Somebody's lit into someone, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie agreed. Warily. There was too much thunder for ships of the line in General Chase of prizes. No convoy could ever make such a din, either.

“Perhaps we might gobble one up, Captain?” Knolles asked. He came of a good family, yes, but they weren't
that
rich, and prize money of his own would be more than welcome.

“I'm going aloft, again. Mister Knolles, might you lend me your glass?”

Forward this time, to scale the foremast, right up to the crosstrees to join the lookout, a spry young topman named Rushing.

“Mine arse on a bandbox!” Lewrie muttered, once he'd had his long look. “That's no grain convoy.”

“Nossir, it ain't,” Rushing agreed breezily.

“'Bout twelve miles off, would you say, Rushing?”

“Aye, Cap'um. 'Bout that.”

“Be up to them . . .” He pulled out his new watch. It was nearly gone eleven of the forenoon. An hour-and-a-half . . . two hours, and they would be up within spitting distance. Or shooting distance.

Without another word, Lewrie took hold of a standing backstay and clambered down it, legs locked and going hand-over-hand, like any topman. Hating every nutmeg-shrinking moment of it, of course, with nothing but oak to stop his fall from nearly one hundred feet above the deck, should he slide too fast and burn his hands, or swing away and dangle by his fists alone.

Once on the quarterdeck again, he gathered his breath by taking another peek at the French frigate off to the east. Their closest pursuer was about five miles off, hull-up now, and driving hard. She had slowly gained on
Jester,
closing the distance between them, and, more importantly, crabbed up a'weather a touch, so she would still hold the wind gauge when they finally met.

“Hard on the wind, Mister Knolles,” Lewrie ordered. “Lay her as close as she'll bear. Hoist every scrap of canvas, 'cept for stuns'ls. We've a race to win.”

“Aye, sir,” Knolles replied, before turning to issue orders. “Sorry to disabuse you, Mister Buchanon,” Lewrie told him with another forced grin, “but we haven't discovered their grain convoy, no. 'Tis their entire Biscay fleet, yonder. And ours. Having at each the other.
That's
the thunder we've been chasing all morning!”

“Wull, stap me, sir.” Buchanon sighed, blanching a bit. “

Another hour or so, and we'll hear all the ‘thunder' a man'd ever wish.” Lewrie chuckled, genuinely amused this time. “Pass the word for Mister Giles!”

“Aye, sir?” the purser inquired from the midships hatchway.

“Mister Giles, I'd admire should you issue the midday meal as soon as we've completed bracing in and making more sail,” Lewrie told him. “The rum issue, too. Today is a Banyan Day, is it not, sir?”

“Well, aye, sir . . .” Giles frowned.

“Little need for the galley fires, then.”

On Banyan Days, the issue was cold victuals: small-beer, cheese, and biscuit, perhaps with the eternal pea soup, but no meat to be simmered in the steep-tubs.

“On the wind, sir,” Knolles reported.

“Very good, Mister Knolles. Once the hands have eat, and drunk their cheer, we'll beat to quarters. Say, 'bout . . . half-past noon, or so. We've a sea battle before us. From a point off the larboard bow to two points to starboard, and we're going to have to tack around the short end, if the fleet that lies alee turns out to be hostile. Let us hope the Frogs are on the
far
side, holding the weather gauge. But, be ready for the worst,” Lewrie explained to them all. “And,
must
we tack around to get inside the protection of our own liners, we're going to have to deal with this bastard frigate.”

“Aye, sir.” Knolles nodded grimly, plucking at his clean silk. “Thunder, by Jesus!” Alan snorted. “Mine arse on a bandbox, Mister Buchanon. Mine arse on a bandbox!”

And laughed out loud as he strolled aft to study the frigate in his glass, leaving them all perplexed by such good cheer.

H
ands
at quarters, standing by their charged, shotted and now-primed artillery pieces, swaying as
Jester
rocked and rolled over the sea. Gun captains would fire them with modern flint-lock strikers in lieu of ancient slow-match linstocks; but slow-match sizzled slowly, wound 'round the mid-deck water tubs, just in case.

The French fleet, unfortunately for Lewrie, were the fighting ships that lay to leeward, those closest to him. There had to be at least thirty of them, it appeared, a ragged procession of proud line-of-battle ships—seventy-fours, eighties, and larger, right up to massive three-decker flagships of one hundred-twenty guns—in a tormented, shot-racked in-line-ahead formation that headed due
west, stretching east-to-west across
Jester
's
track for nearly three miles, like an oak and iron reef. It was no longer the tidy arrangement it had seemed as they'd approached; there were gaps between ships greater than the rigorously ordained half-a-cable separation. There were gaps aloft, too, where ships had lost topmasts and yards. Still, they doggedly plodded west, barring
Jester
a path as she beat close-hauled to weather, west-by-south.

Safety, unfortunately, lay on the
other
side of that bellowing reef of warships. Howe's thirty or so liners had gained the wind gauge and followed a parallel course to the French, lost in the foggy towers of gun smoke that rose from every ship.

Worse yet, there were even more French frigates to leeward of their battle line, to serve as aides to the combatants—as rescuers for those forced to break away, as occupiers aboard any British ship that was forced to strike and be towed away as prize; and as signal repeaters, down in clear air, to relay their admiral's wishes.

And some of those repeating frigates toward the rear of that battle line
had begun to show interest in the strange ship approaching them with no flag flying. The one that appeared to be pursued by one of their sisters!

And the pursuing frigate . . .

Lewrie turned to have another look, no longer needing the telescope. She was up to them, within a mile or less, well within range-to-random shot. It had taken her awhile to recognize that
Jester
had hardened up to windward. She'd soldiered on, still sailing a point-free for about a quarter-hour, before going close-hauled to keep the wind gauge, herself. She'd lost
some
windward advantage, but . . .

There she lay, off the larboard side, nicely framed behind the mizzen stays, almost on a parallel course of west-by-south as a mate to
Jester
's.
Another ten minutes and Lewrie would face a hard choice of standing-on within range of the repeating frigates, perhaps the disengaged broadside guns of the French battle line, or fighting a larger, heavier-armed frigate that blocked her only chance to come about to starboard tack and jink around the stern of the French liners!

“A tack'd lay our head sou'east-by-east, Mister Buchanon?” Lewrie speculated aloud.

“Aye, sir. 'Bout that.” Buchanon grunted. “Excuse me, Cap'um, but I'd not stand on five minutes more, on this tack, else we fetch too near th' Frog liners, an' have no wind alee of 'em, e'en for a reach to th' east t'sail around the last in line. A close shave e'en now, sir.”

“Quite so, Mister Buchanon.” Lewrie nodded, unconsciously rubbing his own raspy and unshaven chin at the mention. There'd been more to worry about this morning than his toilet. “Mister Hyde? Dig into the flag lockers, aft. I b'lieve Our Lords Commissioners issued some false flags? Find the Frog Tricolor.”

“Aye aye, sir!” The lad yelped, dashing off to search.

“A legitimate
ruse de guerre.
”
Lewrie shrugged to his officers. “Give a
few
minutes' confusion, perhaps.”

“Aye, sir! Found it!” Hyde shrilled forward.

“Bend it on, Mister Hyde, and hoist it aloft,” he ordered.

He was hoping that the French line-of-battle ships had just a tad too much on their plate, at the moment, to care one way or another, and the repeating frigates that could come about and intercept him would lose interest; just another corvette arriving with orders from Brest—some silly civilian nonsense from the land-lubbers of the revolutionary Directory, or however they now styled themselves.

He raised his glass, as the French Tricolor was two-blocked high on the mizzenmast. What would that pursuing frigate do, now? he wondered. Wasted a whole morning, chasing some idiot who ignored his signals to fetch-to . . .

Come to think on't, Lewrie grinned, he never sent
me
a signal! Saw me as a chase, right from the start. And if we're both galloping for his fleet flagship like John Gilpin on a
good
horse . . . I
have
to be French, same as him. A body'd be daft as bats to get this close, else!

Three-quarters of a mile separation now, between
Jester
and her pursuer. Good gun range.
Damned
good gun range!

“Ah sir . . . ?” Buchanon prompted uneasily.

“Aye, Mister Buchanon. Mister Knolles, stations for stays, sir! We will put the ship about on the starboard tack. And anyone who puts her in irons . . . I'll have his nutmegs off with a
damn'
dull knife!”

“Bosun Porter, hands to the braces! Hands to the sheets!” Lieutenant Knolles bellowed. “Ready to come about?”

A breathless minute of preparation, hands tailing on braces and sheets, laying paws on tacks, easing all but the last over-under turn around belaying pins and bitts.

“No more than half-a-point free to ease her around, Quartermaster!” Lewrie snapped. “'Tis all the leeway we may spare.” Ships were usually eased a full point off the wind, to gather an extra surge in speed to assure a clean tack.

“Helm alee!” Knolles screeched, at last.

Around she came, driving back up on the wind with a quarter-knot more speed, jib boom and bowsprit sweeping like a pointer across the embattled warships before her bows. Jibs and stays'ls fluttering and canvas popping like gunshots as
Jester
neared the eye of the wind, as sails lost their luffs—yards creaking and 
wood-ball parrels crying as they were swung around. For a heart-stopping moment, she slowed to a crawl, everything aloft aback and banging, before the fore-and-aft stays'ls and jibs
whooshed
across the deck to larboard as she took the wind fine on her starboard bows. The spanker over the quarterdeck and the royals and t'gallants rustled, flagged, then filled, with the hard crack of laundry airing on a line.

“Sou'east-by-east, Quartermaster!” Lewrie cried. “Meet her!”

The wheel spun, spokes blurring as they tried to catch up with her momentum, as she paid off half-a-point to the new lee in spite of their best efforts, as the hands braced hard on the gangways to make a proper
spiral set aloft, royals more sharply angled to the wind than t'gallants, t'gallants more than tops'ls.

From his position at the new windward, starboard, rails, Lewrie espied their pursuing frigate, which now lay just a touch to the right of
Jester
's
bows. It would be a damned close-run thing, but sou'east-by-east would take her clear of the last struggling behemoth line-of-battle ship in the French line. And cross the frigate's stern, if she didn't alter course.

“Shit,” he muttered, though, as the frigate opened fire!

It would be a bow-rake on
Jester
as the frigate crossed her T, employing every available gun in her starboard battery, while
Jester
's two shorter-ranged carronades on the forecastle would be the only guns that could respond! Round-shot tearing through the curving bow timbers, frailer than her sides, rebounding and tearing down the complete length of her gun deck, and down her gangways!

He winced into his wool broadcloth coat, as if it might be some protection, flinching from the avalanche of screaming iron, the jagged metal shards, whirlwind cloud of wood splinters, and the sagging ruin of masts to come. Though feeling an urgent desire to fling himself to the deck, like a sensible person!

The air trembled and moaned above the general cannonade between the fleets, a very personally directed moaning and fluting, as fifteen or more twelve-pounder balls bored their way toward
Jester.
Before their Revolution, France had possessed the finest guns, 
the finest school of naval gunnery in the world, with a dedicated corps of lifelong professional artillerists. And frail little
Jester
was about to receive . . . !

Nothing, pretty much.

A ragged line of feathers erupted from the sea, to either side of her bows, as irregularly spaced as a London urchin's teeth. Great, and rather pretty, pillars of spray and foam leapt up where the round-shot struck the sea at first graze. More feathers abeam, or astern, as cannon balls caromed and bounded over the wave tops like a young lad's stone might skip across a duck pond. Lewrie was sure he heard one or two howl overhead like extremely fat and fatal bumblebees . . . but so high above the royals they didn't even spill an ounce of wind from frail canvas, or sever a single stay in passing!

“Well, damme!” he cried in befuddled exaltation. “Those poor buggers couldn't hit the ground, if they dropped stone-cold
dead!
”

A first broadside, usually the best-laid and pointed, at less than three-quarters of a mile . . . and they'd missed
completely?
Lewrie jeered. Now stand for mine, you poxy clown!

“Mister Knolles, give us a point free! Mister Bittfield, the starboard battery . . . fire as you bear!” he shouted.

Up the fairly steep slant of the deck to windward, nine-pounders on their heavy truck carriages rumbled and growled, foot at a time, as the hands ran their pieces up to the ports and beyond, to point deadly black-painted hog muzzles at the foe. A tug on the side-tackles, or a lever with a crow iron for aiming. Fists raised in the air, from the foc's'le to far aft in the great-cabins beneath his feet, as the gun captains drew their flintlock lanyards taut and stood clear of their charges' recoil.

“On the uproll . . .
Fire!
” Lewrie howled, primed for vengeance.

The foc's'le eighteen-pounder carronade began it, with a deep bark of displeasure. Then, a stuttering series of roars rippled down the starboard side. Lewrie looked aft to Andrews, serving as captain to a quarterdeck carronade. He jerked his lanyard and the piece erupted a short, stabbing flame, and a corona of muzzle smoke. It snubbed to the rear on its slide-carriage, greased wood compressors smoking, too.

“We fired under the French flag, sir!” Knolles cautioned. It was a grave breach of etiquette, that. A
ruse de guerre
was accepted practice, right up to the moment of initiating combat.

“Get that Frog rag down, Mister Spendlove, and hoist our true colors!” Lewrie yelled, not caring much beyond witnessing the strike of his shot. “Swab out, and give 'em another, Mister Bittfield!”

Glorious!

Feathers of spray, close-aboard the French frigate; short, some of them, but grazing along at reduced speed for a solid hit on timber. The sort of low-velocity hits that smashed more hulls in than faster strikes, which might punch clean through. The frigate's sails, yards and masts quivering and twitching as guns fired from leeward, up that slant of the deck even with their quoins full-in, went high. Spanker holed dead-center, mizzen tops'l winging out free of its weather brace, and the main course ripped in half!

The frigate stood on, stolid in spite of her hurts. Cannon appeared in her ports again, and a second ragged, ill-spaced broadside erupted from her. With little more success than the last one! And then, she was forced to tack. She could stand-on on the larboard tack, sail up to her fellows, or she must come about to continue the fight.

Tack, or wear, Lewrie mused, even as his guns spoke again. To wear would put her even with
Jester,
well-astern after completing the twenty-four-point circle. No, she
must
tack, he decided, or throw her hand in as valueless. And that'll silence her guns, for a bit.

“Our ensign's aloft, now, sir,” Spendlove told him.

“Very good, Mister Spendlove. One hopes the Frogs'll take our error as a
minor
slip in
punctilio.
”

“It appears they've worse things to worry about, at the moment, sir!” Midshipman Spendlove japed, pointing to the French battle line. Close as
Jester
had come to the fighting, they could now take gleeful note of British men-o'-war through the thick banks of powder fog, up almost yardarm to yardarm with the French, blazing away at pistol-shot range. “Oh, there she goes, sir . . . coming about!”