Текст книги "Hostile Shores"
Автор книги: Dewey Lambdin
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Текущая страница: 24 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Sighted her again, sir,” Lt. Merriman reported as Lewrie came to the quarterdeck, spurred by the lookouts’ cries of “Sail Ho!” days after Narcissus had departed with her precious cargo. “Her royals or t’gallants only. Can’t spot her from the deck, so she’s over fifteen miles seawards.”
Lewrie extended his telescope anyway, looking not towards their mysterious stalker, but at HMS Diomede, the old 50-gunner, several miles to the North.
“I’m growing tired o’ that bastard,” Lewrie spat. “What does her captain think he’s playin’ at? If she’s a Spanish warship, there is nothing t’be gained by hangin’ about this long after we conquered the bloody place. She should be scuttlin’ off t’warn the other Spanish colonies … go find other men o’ war and come back t’take us on.”
“Unless she’s been left to keep an eye on us whilst the other ships are preparing to come to the Plate, sir,” Lt. Merriman speculated. “Perhaps the word has already been passed?”
“Where are we this morning, Mister Caldwell?” Lewrie asked the Sailing Master, going over to peer at his charts.
“About ten sea miles East of Lobos Island, sir,” Caldwell offered, “and our lurker would be about fifteen miles further seawards of that, is Mister Merriman’s estimate correct.”
Lewrie concentrated on the much-thumbed and pencil-marked sea-chart, looking for inspiration, or a single clue, for long moments. From the port of Maldonado and Cape St. Mary to Cape Norte on the South, the Plate Estuary was over 120 miles wide, narrowing between Montevideo and Point Piedras. It was an impossible distance to cover with three warships, even sailing independently of each other, and their stranger could pop up just temptingly out of reach each dawn and dusk wherever she willed along that line, coming up as near as Point Piedras sometimes, without any risk of interception. Did Diomede, Raisonnable, or Reliant attempt to beat up to her, she would go about and run over the horizon, but, a day or two later, there she would be again, sniffing round the mouth of the estuary.
“Here,” Lewrie muttered, jabbing a finger at the chart, “off Cape Saint Mary, then … here, round mid-entrance, then the next day or so later, she pops up down to the South, like she’s standing on sentry-go, same as us. North, in the middle, in the South … hmm. Not always, though. Her captain must have a pattern to his madness, but I don’t see it. Clues, anyone?” he asked his officers.
“Well, sir, there have been times when she appears in the South at dawn, then comes back within sight not too far away from there at sundown,” Lt. Westcott pointed out. “The next dawn she might be near the middle of the estuary’s mouth, and appear in the North by dusk. At other times, she will make her probes off Cape Saint Mary at dawn and dusk, then pop up to the South. I’m not all that sure that there is a discernible pattern.”
“Perhaps her captain is trying to avoid showing us a pattern, sir,” Lt. Merriman said with a shrug, “but, he seems to have but three places where he closes the coast for a look-see … Cape Saint Mary, Cape Norte, and the middle of the estuary mouth.”
“She was off the middle yesterday?” Lewrie asked. “Then, it may be good odds she’ll either be off Cape Saint Mary just before sundown tonight, or round the middle. Hah!” he barked. “Let’s gamble! We will stay near Cape Saint Mary and Lobos Island the rest of the day, standin’ off-and-on, but slowly make our way seaward a few more miles. Not enough t’frighten her off. Whether she appears off the Cape, or further down towards the middle of the estuary mouth, I intend that we dash out once it’s full dark.…” He paused, looking aft at the taffrail lanthorns either side of the stern. “We won’t light the lanthorns but replace ’em with small hand-held lamps. That’ll make us look as if we’re further off from her. Once she’s had her evening look-see, we’ll douse ’em, one at a time, as she makes her way back seaward for the night, then douse the last ’un, show no lights at all, and chase after her, get seaward of her, and catch her on a lee shore! Pin her ’twixt us and the other ships!”
“Even if we don’t bring her to action, we might give her such a scare that her captain tosses in his cards and sails away,” Lieutenant Westcott chortled.
“Mister Merriman, I’d be much obliged did you alter course to seaward, nothing too drastic … perhaps no more than two points. We have all day,” Lewrie ordered. “Diomede is bound South, the same as us, and I wish t’stay within signalling distance of her, perhaps no more than six or seven miles off ’til sundown.”
“Very good, sir! Bosun! Pipe all hands to the braces, and be ready to alter course!” Lt. Merriman shouted down to the waist of the ship.
“Hah!” Lewrie exulted, clapping his hands together. “I will be below, Mister Merriman, finishin’ my breakfast. Carry on. Drill on the great-guns in the Forenoon, finishin’ with live fire.”
“Aye, sir.”
Damme, I feel like a feagued horse! he thought as he trotted down the ladderway to the waist, stopping to pet Bisquit and let him stand on his hind legs with his paws on his chest, ruffling fur and telling him what a good dog he was.
Days on end of boredom and frustration, with very little news of what was transpiring round Buenos Aires, denied any part in the landings at Point Quilmes, left to cruise fruitlessly … now, all of that was swept away by the prospect of discovering just who, or what, had been lurking just out of reach, by the possibility of a sea-fight, broadside-to-broadside … or the imagined shock they might cause when they appeared to seaward of their mysterious lurker, and cutting off her escape!
Very much like an aged horse, dosed by shrewd traders with a plug of ginger up the rump to appear young and lively, Lewrie felt as if he’d suddenly shed ten years and could prance in circles!
“A warm-up of your coffee, sir?” Pettus offered as Lewrie swept the tails of his coat back and sat himself down at the dining table once more, tucking his napkin into his shirt collar, then rubbing his hands in delight.
“I’d much admire it, thankee kindly, Pettus!” Lewrie happily replied, so loud that Chalky, at the other end of the table, started and crouched behind his food bowl. “Oh, don’t be such a scaredy-cat, puss. It’s only me, in high takings for once.”
“High takings, sir?” Pettus asked as he poured the coffee.
“Our spook is back, but tonight we’re goin’ t’have a go at ‘smoaking’ her out,” Lewrie explained, beaming in glee. “Once I’ve eat, Pettus, we’ll see to my weapons. There’s a good chance I’ll have need of ’em on the morrow. Oil, brushes, rags, and flints. And, do see that I’ve a clean silk shirt and stockings, and a fresh-washed pair o’ breeches, just in case.
“Damme!” he cried. “With any luck at all, I’m going t’catch that bastard ghost ship out yonder if it kills me!”
CHAPTER FORTY
“Sir? Sir?”
“Uhmph?”
“Seven Bells of the Middle Watch, sir,” Pettus prompted by the edge of Lewrie’s hanging bed-cot, with a small candle lanthorn in his hand. “You said to wake you half an hour before the change of watch.”
“Um, aye,” Lewrie agreed with a curt nod. “I’m awake.”
Don’t want t’be, Lewrie thought, for he had been having one of the grandest dreams of a neck-or-nothing steeplechase, soaring like a falcon over hedgerows, stone walls, and stiles in company with boisterous old friends; even stout Clotworthy Chute, his old school chum who’d been expelled with him from Harrow, could keep up and keep his saddle like a born horseman—which he most certainly was not! There had been naked ladies, full tits bouncing most wondrously, too, all of them handsome. No one he’d known, but it had felt damned promising!
“Cold tea, sir,” Pettus offered.
“Cold, and scant, comfort,” Lewrie muttered, whisking back the covers and rolling out of the bed-cot barefoot, clad in nothing but his underdrawers. As he sipped the tea he looked round his cabins to assure himself that all the sash-windows in the stern, and both the windows in the quarter-galleries, were covered with jute sacking, and would show no light out-board. It was stuffy, humid, and almost cool to the shivering point belowdecks, in those hours before sunrise.
With the pewter mug of tea in hand, he went to the larboard quarter-gallery, had a long pee, swished and gargled with tea, then spat into the “necessary” to clear his mouth.
“Let’s shove me into order, Pettus,” he bade, stripping off the underdrawers and donning a fresh-washed set. He sat in his desk chair to pull on silk stockings and bind them behind his knees, stood to pull on clean breeches, then his Hessian boots. Pettus offered him a silk shirt, then helped tie the neck-stock. With the addition of a waist-coat, uniform coat, and cocked hat, he was ready to go on deck, just a quarter hour before Eight Bells and the change of watch, and the call for all hands to “wakey-wakey, lash up and stow”.
“Cap’m’s on deck!” the Master’s Mate of the watch alerted the the others on the quarterdeck as Lewrie made his way up from the waist.
“Good morning, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said in a soft voice.
“Good morning, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie replied, tapping his fingers to the brim of his hat. “Now, where away is our spook? And what is our heading?”
“As at midnight, when you went below, sir,” Spendlove answered. “Course Sou’west by South, making six knots by the last cast of the log, and about fourty miles seaward of the estuary, by Dead Reckoning. The lookout at the main cross-trees reports that he has our stranger’s taffrail lanthorns in sight, just barely … inshore of us, sir! Not twelve miles off! Three points off the starboard bows, at the last hailing.”
“So she is makin’ for the middle of the estuary mouth!” Lewrie exclaimed, clapping his hands together in satisfaction, a sound much too loud for the wee hours, and the tense anticipation of the entire on-watch crew. “Any idea of her course?” Lewrie asked, going to the starboard, lee, bulwarks to peer out, even if nothing could be seen in the deep darkness from the deck.
“She seems to be plodding along on roughly the same course as ours, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said as he followed Lewrie to the rails, “though if she intends to close the coast to visual range of Diomede or us … were we there, of course … she may haul her wind at any time.”
“Uhm, aye,” Lewrie agreed. “We’re fourty miles offshore, and she’s twelve miles closer … twenty-eight miles off. Even at a plod under reduced sail, she could get within twelve miles of the middle of the estuary mouth just before dawn … if she goes about soon. Is she a warship, she surely stands the same watches as us. At Eight Bells…”
He pulled out his pocket watch, but couldn’t read its face in the darkness. The wee lanthorn at the forecastle belfry was shrouded, as was the light from the compass binnacle, with just enough of a slit in the cloth covering for the helmsmen to steer by. He gave the idea up and shoved it back into his pocket.
“Ye know, Mister Spendlove, I think this is goin’ t’work!” he said in a low voice, though one tinged with humour.
* * *
He hadn’t been all that sure and confident at sundown the evening before, wasn’t even sure that their mysterious ghost would appear near Lobos Island, or had in the meantime made off South nearer the mouth of the Plate Estuary. When within signalling distance of HMS Diomede, he had spelled out his intentions to her captain, requesting that Diomede play the anvil whilst Reliant would be the hammer, or the beater. The frigate had slowly made her way a few miles further offshore, waiting.
Lewrie had felt real hope when the stranger’s uppermost sails had arisen over the horizon, six leagues to the Sou’east of Lobos Island, her royals or t’gallants lit amber by the last rays of the descending sun. Reliant lay to her West with her sham taffrail lanthorns already lit, making her easy to spot, but not so far out to sea near her to give their ghost alarm. Playing the peek-a-boo game too long, their stranger had lulled herself into complacency … or so Lewrie prayed. One last look before supper, and a turn out to sea to wallow along South to the mid-point of the estuary entrances, out of sight for the night, and she would be safe as houses ’til the morrow, when she closed the coast and came in sight once more, still too far aloof and seaward to risk any real danger.
Or so her captain would think!
Once night had fallen, the sea had turned to ink, and the only light came from a myriad of stars, the Southern Cross most prominent, their stranger was below the horizon and out of sight, and Lewrie had ordered a change of course to stand out Sou’-Sou’east, and the reefs shaken from her courses and tops’ls, and the hand-lanthorns at the stern extinguished.
He’d gone below just long enough to shave and take a sponge-bath, then had returned to the quarterdeck, to pace and fret ’til one of the lookouts had called out that he espied their stranger’s stern lights on the horizon, down to the South, and two points off the starboard bows. An hour and a half later, and the report was that their ghost was abeam, and Lewrie had gone below again for a light supper, sure that they would be to seaward of her when the dawn came. They’d altered course at 9 P.M., had cracked on sail for a time, and Lewrie had finally gone below at midnight for a few hours’ rest.
* * *
Eight Bells chimed at the belfry up forward in four twin taps, the last stroke lingering, as the Middle Watch ended and the Morning began. Lt. George Merriman relieved Spendlove, and groggy-sleepy men turned out from the gun deck below to replace the night watchstanders. Bosuns’ calls trilled orders, and the frigate rumbled to hundreds of feet as sailors rolled out of their hammocks to thud onto the planks, grumbled, and lashed up their bedding and hammocks into long sausages narrow enough to pass through the ring measures. Off-watch sailors went below to fetch their rolled-up bedding and bring them on deck to stow in the metal stanchions down both sail-tending gangways and the bulwarks of the quarterdeck, and the cross-deck stanchions at the front of the quarterdeck. Other hands were breaking out and rigging the wash-deck pumps for the usual morning’s cleaning with brooms and mops, and holystone “bibles” to scrub the decks snowy-clean.
“Deck there!” a lookout tried to shout down over the din. “Do ye hear, there? Chase is goin’ about! She’s stern-on!”
“Mister Spendlove … before we start swabbin’, I’ll have the ship put about to West-Nor’west,” Lewrie ordered.
“Aye, sir,” Spendlove replied, pausing to grin and ask, “So she really is inshore of us?”
“Aye, she is, and we may soon have her,” Lewrie told him. “Do be quick about it.”
“Aye, sir!”
The Third Officer, Mr. Merriman, had gone below for a brief nap after standing the Middle Watch, and perhaps a bite or two before returning to the deck prepared for possible action. Lt. Westcott, the First Officer, came up after four hours of sleep, along with Marine Lieutenant Simcock. The both of them were armed already, sporting their swords and braces of pistols. Simcock looked the freshest, for with no watchstanding duties to perform, he always had “all night in”.
“Where is she? Can we see her yet?” Simcock eagerly asked, all but bouncing on his toes to gain an inch or more of view to the West.
“Still hull-down to us from the deck, and only the lookouts can see her,” Lewrie told him. “She’s there, rest assured she is.” He had to speak loudly over the dins as the braces and sheets were manned and eased, as the helm was put over, and their frigate swung her bows onto the new course in pursuit of their stranger.
“Deck, there!” a lookout yelled down. “Chase is one point off the starb’d bows!”
“We are chasing her, now,” Lewrie told them with a laugh, “even if she doesn’t know it, yet. We can now call her a ‘Chase’. Once she spots us and tries to run … what will she be then, Mister Munsell?” he asked the nearest Midshipman of the Watch, who had been listening.
“An ‘Enemy Then Flying’, sir!” Munsell quickly piped up.
“Well, I for one wish she takes no notice of us ’til after the galley fires have been lit, and I can have a cup of strong coffee, or two,” Lt. Westcott said with a groan and a long, wide yawn.
“I fear we’ll be silhouetted against the dawn, perhaps even by the false dawn, long before that,” Lewrie commented as he looked up at the sails, almost lost in the darkness. “Today’s a Banyan Day, at any rate. The best we may expect’ll be small beer, cheese, and bisquit. Hot porridge’ll be out of the question.”
“Well, damme,” Westscott said, yawning again.
“Have a bad night of it, did you?” Lewrie asked in jest.
“Tossed and turned, even after a stiff brandy,” Westcott said with a shrug.
“That’s more due the Sailing Master’s snores,” Lt. Simcock told Lewrie. “I compare them to a beach full of sea lions, but Merriman’s of the opinion he sounds more like a whole warehouse full of rolling casks. Back and forth, rumble, rumble, rumble!”
“He’s the loudest in the Middle Watch,” Westcott said with a grimace, “right in the middle of my most vivid dreams!”
“Hmm, the lookouts aloft are most-like seeing our ghost by her taffrail lanthorns,” Lewrie speculated, looking up again at the masts. “It’s still too dark to see her sails. That puts her hull-up above the night horizon from them. That’d be … inside twelve miles of visibility, perhaps about eight.
“Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie said, turning to the Officer of the Watch. “What is the last cast of the log?”
“Six knots, sir,” Spendlove answered.
“Very well. Let’s take one reef in the main course to slow us down a bit,” Lewrie ordered. “I’d like our stranger to only see our t’gallants by false dawn, which’ll be about an hour and a half from now. She just might think we’re a transport fetching re-enforcements, and come out to us.”
“Or, she might spook and run, sir,” Westcott cautioned.
“Aye, but run to where, sir?” Lewrie posed, grinning. “South, I think. The winds are fair for Mar del Plata down the coast, or to Bahía Blanca, if she needs a hidey-hole. Perhaps that’s where she’s come from in the first place, and got word of our invasion overland. We knew almost nothing but rumours and fantasies about the Argentine before we invaded it, and the Plate Estuary’s a bad place to maintain warships, what with all the shoals and banks, as we’ve discovered.”
“Main mast captain and crew!” Spendlove was bellowing through a brass speaking-trumpet. “Trice up, lay out, and take one reef in the main course!”
Westcott and Simcock began to pace to kill the time, even if they were strictly not on watch, and could have gone below once the wash-deck pumps were stowed away. Westcott’s yawning had infected Lewrie, and, after a few more minutes standing stern and stoic by the forward windward corner of the quarterdeck, he felt his eyelids lowering and his head nodding. He shook himself several times to try and stay awake, but when he caught himself leaning on the bulwarks, with an arm threaded through the shrouds to stay upright, he surrendered to the moment. He called for his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair and had himself a sit-down, and allowed himself a little nap before the sun came up, and the game would be afoot.
“Think we’re in for a scrape this mornin’?” one of the Quartermasters on the helm, Baldock, asked Master’s Mate Hook.
“Sounds like it,” Hook whispered back.
“Cap’m don’t look worried,” Baldock said as he eased a spoke or two. “Might come out aright, then.”
“Wager ya he’s schemin’ on how t’beat ’em, this very minute,” Hook assured him with a grin. “Cap’m knows how t’win, and fight. Seen it before, when I was in the old Proteus with him, and God help Frogs, Dons, and Dutchies … any o’ the King’s enemies.”
Up forward, and un-heard by Baldock and Hook on the helm, the “fighting” Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, snorted as his chin drooped onto his chest.
* * *
Ting-Ting! Ting!
“Umph.”
The striking of Three Bells of the Morning Watch pulled Lewrie from his nap with a grunt. He raised his head a few degrees and saw that the false dawn had crept up on Reliant from the East, astern of her, while he had drowsed. His ship was once more a solid thing from the bulwark beside him to the out-thrust tip of the jib-boom, though still an indefinite greyness.
He stood, and looked forward in search of the strange intruder, but she was still below the horizon from his vantage on the quarterdeck, as was the Plate Estuary and the Argentine coast. Far enough to sea beyond the jungles and the estuary, there was no hint of the daily fogs, either; what he could see of the sea’s horizon was as flat and sharp-edged as a table top. Closer to, the sea was not the ink-black of night, but had lightened to a slate grey, flecked here and there with lighter grey foaming wave crests, like dirty wash suds.
Aloft, the intricate maze of both standing and running rigging was a spider web done in charcoal, and the sails still colourless, almost indistinguishable from a rainy-day overcast. Even the bright red-white-blue commissioning pendant that streamed off towards the larboard bows might just as well been a long hank of rope.
“I miss anything?” Lewrie asked after he paced over to the iron hammock stanchions at the forward break of the quarterdeck to speak to Lt. Spendlove.
“No, sir,” Spendlove replied, “we’re standing on as before at about five knots. The lookouts report that the Chase is still burning her taffrail lanthorns, and that they can now make out her t’gallants.”
“Very good, carry on, sir,” Lewrie said, turning to note that Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, was now on deck. “Dawn, sir?”
“Full dawn at fifteen minutes after six, sir,” Caldwell said. “It is now half past five, and a bit.”
The decks had been washed, scoured, and were now almost dry. The wash-deck pumps had been stowed away, and only the duty watch was on deck. Lewrie caught the scent of burning firewood from the galley funnel.
“Larbowlines at their breakfast?” he asked.
“Hot porridge, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said.
“Let’s make sure the starboard watch division has their breakfast before we shut the galley down,” Lewrie said. “I suppose Mister Westcott has got his coffee, at last? Hah, good! Pass word for my steward. I could use a bowl of porridge, and a mug of coffee, too.”
Four Bells were struck at 6 A.M., as the skies astern lightened even more, and the indefinite greyness of the sails, the ship, and the sea took on vivid “early-early” colour, as if this day would come fresh-laundered after the worn drabness of the day before. The airs were cool and refreshing, the nippiness of night quickly forgotten as a breeze scented with deep-sea iodine and salt freshened. Inshore, in the estuary, there would be fogs and overcasts, but this far out to sea, the skies promised lots of sunshine and few clouds.
“Deck, there!” a lookout called down. “Th’ Chase’z doused ’er lights! One point orf th’ starb’d bows!”
Lewrie paced down to the helm, and the chart pinned to the traverse board. He picked up one of the Sailing Master’s brass dividers to measure off distances, then looked astern at the dawn. Mr. Caldwell shared a look with him, gazed sternward himself for a moment, and drew out his own pocket watch.
“Seven minutes ’til dawn proper, sir,” Caldwell adjudged.
“By the casts of the log, we’ve made up fifteen miles of Westing, and should be about twelve miles astern of our spook,” Lewrie determined. “She should be spottin’ us soon, now, if our top-masts are above the horizon … unless they’re blind as bats, o’ course.”
“There is a chance, sir, that they’re so used to peering shoreward that they may not take too many glances over their shoulders, and we could get very close before they spot us,” Caldwell offered.
“Well, that’ll never do,” Lewrie jovially objected. “I want us t’be seen, and draw her too far out for her to run for Mar del Plata or Bahía Blanca and get away.”
“Deck, there!” the mainmast lookout in the cross-trees yelled. “Th’ Chase’z goin’ about! ’Er bows’z pointin’ South, beam-onta us! She’s fine on th’ starb’d bow!”
“Should we alter course more Sutherly to cut her off, sir?” Lt. Spendlove asked. “Make more sail, perhaps?”
“Hold course for a bit more, sir,” Lewrie told him. “Let’s see if she runs, or she comes about towards us. We’re loafin’ along like a transport, under reduced sail for the night, and on a rough course for enterin’ the Plate. Let’s see if she bites.”
“Deck, there! Chase’z wearin’ about!” came a call from aloft. “Turnin’ Easterly!”
“Well, now!” Lewrie said, beaming with delight. “If the people have finished their breakfast, I’ll have the galley fires cast overboard, Mister Spendlove. Stand on for a bit more, like we’re blind as bats, ’til we can spot her sails above the horizon from the deck, then we can sham panic, and go about. Mister Westcott? I will fetch you the keys to the arms lockers, now. We’ll wait, though, to ‘Beat To Quarters’ ’til she’s much closer. Once I’m back on deck, you can begin to strip down the ship for action.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott crisply replied with a feral gleam in his eyes, eager for the fight to start.
Lewrie went to his cabins, unlocked his desk, and fetched out the keys to the arms lockers and crammed them into a side pocket of his coat. He went to his own weapons rack and strapped on his plain hanger sword, primed his pre-loaded double-barrelled Manton pistols, and stuck them down into his coat pockets, too.
“Is it beginning, sir?” Pettus asked.
“It appears t’be, Pettus,” Lewrie told his steward. “You and Jessop box up the last of my things, and see everything to the orlop, Chalky and the dog, too.”
“I been drillin’ with the other lads, sir,” Jessop piped up. “I can run powder cartridges from the magazines, good as any, now.”
Lewrie paused and cocked his head to look Jessop over; he had come aboard a twelve-year-old waif, and was now almost sixteen, and nigh a grown lad as much like the teenaged topmen who served aloft.
“Very well, Jessop,” Lewrie said with a stern nod. “You wish to do a man’s part, you have my leave t’do so.”
“Thank ye, sir!” Jessop cried, looking so happy that he could turn St. Catherine’s Wheels in delight.
“Luck to the both of you,” Lewrie bade them, stopping to give Chalky a parting petting. The cat was crouched atop his desk, curled up into a wary meat loaf shape, as if he sensed something ominous in Lewrie’s weapons, or the sight of the domed wicker cage that was used to bear him below and out of harm.
Lewrie got back to the quarterdeck and handed Lt. Westcott the arms locker keys. Westcott grimly nodded, then bellowed for word to be passed for the Master-At-Arms and the Ship’s Corporals to come to fetch them. With another nod to Bosun Sprague and his Mate, Wheeler, he gave permission for Quarters to be piped. Lt. Simcock’s Marine drummer and fifer began the Long Roll, then a gay martial air that drew off-watch hands back on deck. One of the ship’s boats was hauled from towing astern and filled with chickens, ducks, rabbits, and quail from the manger, with the nanny goat and her kid, and several squealing piglets. HMS Reliant thundered and drummed to the sounds of deal-and-canvas partitions being struck down and carried to the orlop, of officers’ and seamens’ chests stowed below to turn all of her decks to long, empty spaces from bow to stern, filled only with guns.
Half an hour later, and the frigate was ready for combat, and the only step left was to load, prime, and run out. Lewrie called for everyone to stand easy. He went to the lee bulwarks to larboard and raised a telescope to peer at their stranger past the wind-curved jibs.
“I can make out her t’gallants and tops’ls, now, from the deck,” he said to Lt. Westcott as he crossed back to amidships. “She’ll be hull-up in the next half hour. Time t’shake our lazy night reefs out, Mister Westcott, like our idle merchantmen do, and make more sail … except for the main course, which we’ll have to brail up before fire is opened, anyway. Chain slings on the yards whilst you’re at it, and rig the boarding nettings in-board of the bulwarks, out of sight ’til needed.”
“Aye, sir. Colours?” Lt. Westcott asked, peeking aft at the bare gaff and spanker boom line.
“Not ’til she breaks out hers,” Lewrie decided, pausing, then grinning impishly. “We’ve Spanish Colours in the flag lockers? Damme, I wonder what our stranger’d make o’ that! Or, do we have a British merchant ensign … I wonder which’d tempt him more!”
I’m pretty sure she’s Spanish, Lewrie mulled over to himself as his First Officer tended to making more sail, and the rigging of the slings and anti-boarding nets; I don’t think there’s a Dutch warship in the entire South Atlantic, and God only knows what’d draw a French ship this far afield. A British merchant flag t’lure her on, or show them a Spanish flag, and bring her out to warn a fellow countryman to the British invasion? God, that’d be rich! And she’d be put off her guard, her gun crews stood down.
“Deck there!” a lookout called down. “Th’ Chase’z hoistin’ British Colours!”
“The Devil ye say!” Lewrie barked, going back to the bulwarks to lift his telescope once more. Sure enough, even from the deck, he could make out the merest hint of bright bunting, an imitation of the Union Flag.
“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie hooted. “I’ll wager ye that her captain thinks he’s a clever ‘sly boots’, Mister Westcott! Hoist the Red Ensign, if ye please. Show him we’re a fat, dumb merchantman. And everyone look relieved, haw!” he called to the officers and men on the quarterdeck. He looked aft to watch Midshipman Shannon and the hands of the Afterguard bending on and hoisting the Red Ensign on the spanker’s boom peak. “When we’ve fetched her fully hull-up, we’ll put up our number in this month’s code book, and see what the Dons make of that.”
We can fight her under the Red Ensign, Lewrie thought, tautly smiling; It’s the Navy’s Red Squadron flag, too. Nobody’ll fault me for opening fire under false colours, not this time!
In 1794, when he’d first had command of the old Jester sloop, he hadn’t had false French colours lowered and Navy colours run up before delivering one broadside, and he’d been criticized for it in enemy newspapers, and Nelson himself had torn a strip off his arse.
