THE GUN KETCH l-5

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Aye, I will, and thankee," Lewrie nodded. "More of my bloody… way!" Distressed as he was, Lewrie could not help smiling at himself.

  Say Finney's lugger made seven-and-a-half knots, though, Alan calculated in moody silence; five hours' lead to start with, and 160 sea-miles to The Stream… whilst we fetched it in 150 miles. God, we might have cut three hours off his lead. And we're a knot faster, say, all last night and all day today, with the current, now he thinks he's clear of pursuit We'll make twenty-four more miles a day than he, so… if his original lead was only thirty-seven miles…Christ! What if he did put into Andros, the Berrys, inshore of the Gulf Stream down at Bimini to wait it out? Or, he could be flying everything aloft but his laundry, all this time… We'll never catch him up!

  "Coffee, sir," Cony announced half an hour later.

  "Hmmph?" Lewrie growled, startled from his musings.

  "Yer coffee, sir," Cony offered. "An' wot'll ya 'ave fer yer breakfast, sir?"

  "This'll do, Cony. This'll do for now," he grumped. "Thankee."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Cony nodded sorrowfully.

  Bounding, swooping, rolling at the top of a wave, Alacrity was driven on, her course due north. Foam creamed down her flanks to lay roiled astern, quarter-waves sucking low at her after hull as thesea made a perfect shallow S, horizontally from bow to stern, frothing in a millrace under her transom. Eight-and-three-quarter knots now, as enough cargo and artillery had been shifted aft to lift her bows. On steeper rollers she surfed forward, and sometimes defied the ocean a hold on her, the bow-wave breaking aft of her cutwater, and her whole hull lifting from the sea in her haste, as if she would take wings and fly in those moments when wind and sea conjoined, before falling away to snuffle deep and plow the water again with a disappointed soughing.

  "Sail ho!" the lookout screamed at last from the cross-trees. "Where away?" Commander Rodgers shouted back, wakened from his nap in Alan's sybaritic canvas sling chair.

  "Two points off the larboard bows! A little inshore! Nought but tops'ls an' royals!"

  "What's to loo'rd?" Lewrie asked, rubbing sleep from his own eyes, his skin tingling from too long in the sun in a restless nod.

  "Almost due west by now, sir, 'tis Savannah," Fellows reported. "Nor'west is Charleston. Little over an hundred mile to either."

  "And we're to windward of her, whoever she is," Lewrie crowed, fully awake. "She carries on north, she'll ram herself into the sand shoals off Wilmington, but she'll not weather the Outer Banks, not if I have a say in it! Mister Ballard, you have the deck, I'm going to spy out our little mystery ship."

  He slung a telescope over his shoulder, leapt for the shrouds and went aloft, aching to see for himself.

  "There she be, sir," the lookout said, once he' d found a perch on the narrow slats of the cross-trees.

  "Look like a lugger to you?" Alan demanded, extending the tube of his glass.

  "Hard t'say from 'ere, sir. Jus' tops'ls, so far," the lookout opined. "Funny angle, though, Cap'n, sir. Like Levanter lateens, or some'n ain't got 'er lift-lines set proper to 'er royals."

  Alacrity lifted on a swell as Lewrie laid the spyglass level on the tiny tan imperfections that marred the even horizon. Miles off, the other ship was lifted upwards as well for a long breath or two, but dropped almost from view as Alacrity settled in a deep trough.

  "I'd almost…" he sighed, lowering the heavy tube for awhile. He stood, precariously, on the cross-tree braces, wrapping one arm to the upper mast, inside taut halyards and lift-lines. Braced securely, he raised the telescope again. The distant sails swam into focus.

  "Three-masted," he grunted.

  "Aye, like lateeners, or… Woooo" he whooped, loud enough to startle people on the decks below. "They're gaff top-mast stays'ls. She's a three-masted lugger!"

  A lugger would mount small, oddly shaped sails between the tip of the upper masts and the gaff boom at the top of her mainsails, and that was what he had seen! It was a lugger, sure! But whose?

  "Keep a sharp eye on her," he told his lookout. "Sing out, if she alters course or changes the slightest bit."

  "Aye, aye, sir!"

  Lewrie took a stay to the deck, tar and slush on his clothing be-damned, to join the curious on the quarter-deck.

  "It's a lugger. Mister Neill, steer us a point free larboard. We'll close her, slow. I make her twelve miles off now. By the end of the first dog watch, we'll have her at less than ten miles, so we may figure out if she's the Car… if she's Finney's."

  "If she wishes to keep to the Gulf Stream, she's going to have to harden up and go closer-hauled, sir," Fellows suggested. "Allow me to suggest we stand on north, sir, we'll close her even so. Another two hours, and we'll lose the current ourselves inshore."

  "And so will she, if she can't get to windward of us," Alan said. "And she won't," he vowed.

  "Chase is goin' close-hauled, sir!" the lookout hallooed.

  "Belay, Mister Neill. Mister Ballard, lay us hard on the wind."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Whatever she was, whoever the lugger belonged to, she was trying to flee, to get up to windward, and keep the advantage of the current of the Gulf Stream to weather Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks. One more confirming sign that it most likely was Jack Finney, awakened to the fact of a pursuit.

  No longer a mystery, Lewrie thought with satisfaction; now she was a chase!

  The afternoon wore on, with both vessels clawing up to windward. Alacrity was already the possessor of the wind gauge. Weatherly as a lugger was, she could attain perhaps a full point closer to the winds, but Alacrity was just the slightest bit faster. Making leeway as she did, she still head-reached her chase, and closed the range to eleven miles, to ten, to nine, bringing the lugger almost hull-up, as Alacrity sailed the shorter closing angle.

  "We're gaining on her, by Christ!" Rodgers chortled with glee.

  "The Caroline was New Providence-built, sir," Lieutenant Ballard told him coolly, blushing a bit as he pronounced her name."As flat-ran and shoal-draught as Alacrity. Perhaps more so. But she makes just as much leeway as we do, with so little below the waterline for the sea to bite on. Long as we hold the weather gauge…"

  "And damme if we might just be half a knot faster," Lewrie added with joy. "A full knot off the wind in the Gulf Stream. She'll be within range of random shot in six hours."

  "He'll try to slip away once it's dark," Rodgers snorted. "No lights showin', they could tack an' pass astern."

  "We've moon enough to see that, sir," Lewrie countered. "And, to expect to beat against the Gulf Stream? No."

  "Chase is 'aulin' 'er wind, there!" the lookout interrupted., "Turnin' west an' runnin' free, d'ye hear, there!"

  "By God, here's another angle to cut short!" Lewrie laughed as he grabbed Ballard by the arm. "Arthur, haul our wind, now! We might gain a mile on him if we're quick enough! Come about to west-nor'west!"

  "Aye, aye, sir. Mister Harkin, all hands! Ready to come about!" Rodgers and Lewrie got out of Ballard's way, taking a corner of the quarter-deck free of tumult to inspect their chase with telescopes.

  "Runnin' for Charleston, it appears, into neutral waters," Com-. mander Rodgers decided. "Damn him."

  "He has too much sail aloft," Lewrie stated. "Inshore, he'D pick up a land breeze later today. See how she heels, sir? That's too much heel for a flat-run hull, even off the wind as she is now. She's sailing on her shoulder, not her bottom. If he doesn't reef in those lateener topmast stays'ls, she's working too hard, bows-down."

  "By God, he's no real sailor, is he, Lewrie?" Rodgers hooted. "Had you some champagne, I'd pop it now, to celebrate. We'll have him, by God, we'll have the bugger yet!"

  "Many a slip, 'twixt the cup and the Up, sir," Lewrie smiled. "Aye, he may not be as tarry as he boasted. But he's running us one merry little chase. And, when it comes to it, he'll fight like some cornered rat. Now, to keep him out of American jurisdiction, we have to overtake him, take the lee position to block him."

  "We'll h
ave him," Rodgers insisted stubbornly. "We'll have him."

  Chapter 12

  By sunset, Alacrity left the Gulf Stream, inshore into waters that chopped instead of rolled. Caroline was still an hour ahead at the least, out of the Stream first, and making a more direct course, with less leeway, even as the land breeze found her. Try as they might to counter the last of the powerful current, Alacrity ended up dead astern of the chase, beating against the land breeze, lumping and booming against the chop and the short rollers of the returning scend of waves breaking over the horizon against the Carolina coast.

  "She still makes too much heel," Lewrie decided after pondering the dark spectre in his telescope. "So do we," he added, comparing the angle of his decks against the chase's.

  "Nighttime land breezes will be gentler, sir, not as strong," Ballard speculated. "That'll ease her."

  "Topmen of the watch aloft, Mister Ballard. We'll take first reef in the fore-tops'l," Lewrie ordered.

  "Are ya daft, Lewrie?" Rodgers hissed from the gloom of sunset by his elbow. "I thought ya wanted t'catch the bastard?"

  "I do, sir. But the fore-tops'l depresses the bows, and heels us too much, even going close-hauled as we are. Letting the fore-and-aft sails do the work lets us pinch up to windward half a point."

  "You are captain, sir, but I'm your superior," Rodgers grunted.

  "Do but let me try it, sir," Lewrie begged. "Two hours. There's moon enough to see her, and a sextant'11 tell us if she's gaining, by the height of her mast-trucks 'bove the horizon. We're even in speed for now, perhaps a quarter-knot or half-knot faster, and that's not enough to intercept her before she's in American waters."

  "Two hours, then," Rodgers allowed at last. "But should we fall too far behind, it'll be your fault, Lewrie. Your fault, hear me?" "Aye, aye, sir."

  Eased just the slightest bit, though, sailing more upright on her natter bottom, Alacrity closed the range. Six miles off, five and then four, with more of Finney's Caroline visible above the horizon at each chiming of the watch bells. Satisfied that his solution had worked, Lewrie slumped down for a nap far aft on the signal-flag lockers, muffled against the sea-wind's chill in a gro-gram boat-cloak. With his head lolled against the taffrail, he nodded off at last, his last waking sight the dark, creaming wake alongside.

  Cony came to wake him just before eight bells of the middle, a few minutes before four a.m., with a mug of black coffee. Alan took one sip to sluice foul sleep from his mouth, spat it over the side, then drank deep before handing the mug back to his servant. He walked forward for his telescope, and a view ahead, to assure himself that their chase was still there.

  Caroline loomed even taller above the horizon of false-dawn, a slanted black semi-colon on the glittering silvery trough of the last of the moon astern. Using a sextant and a slate, Lewrie determined, assuming Caroline's masts stood seventy feet above her decks, that she was still being slowly overtaken, and was now a little less than three miles off, no matter how much sail she flew, which course she steered. And she was still heeled over too far!

  "He said he'd made third mate," Lewrie muttered to himself as he stowed the sextant away in the binnacle cabinet. "Surely, he must know to ease her aloft."

  "Sir?" Sailing Master Fellows queried his grunts. "Two hours, I make it, to good practice for our guns, sir," he substituted.

  "But by dead reckoning, Captain, sir," Fellows countered wearily, "three hours to the Charleston Bar. And within range of the forts. We will be cutting it exceeding fine, sir. I doubt our rebellious cousins would appreciate us taking her right on their front stoop."

  "I doubt the United States of America would shelter pirates. All the more reason to catch her up before we reach their waters."

  "Aye, sir," Fellows nodded in agreement "Excuse me, sir, but I do believe the sea-wind is returning. A puff or two from the south'rd, so far, but it is veering, sir. We'll have stern winds in an hour, I believe, on our larboard quarter, from the sou'east."

  "My respects to the first lieutenant, Mister Fellows, and…"

  "I'm here, sir," Ballard announced from Lewrie's off-side, just at his elbow, which made Alan almost leap in surprise.

  "Ah, good morning, Mister Ballard. Hands to the sheets and the braces, sir. And shake out that reef in the fore-tops'l."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "Land ho!" a bow lookout shouted aft. "Charleston Light, fine on the bows!"

  "Less than three hours to Yankee jurisdiction, then," Fellows sighed. "Sorry, sir, it seems my dead reckoning's off a mite."

  "Time enough," Lewrie insisted. "Just barely. I hope."

  True sunrise came, and with it, steady offshore winds out of the east-sou'east, laden with the smell of storm and rain later in the day; the dawn a gray and gloomy beast that dingied the whitecaps and stained the seas iron-gray as spilled washwater and suds. Two miles astern of Caroline they approached, relentlessly gaining; then only one mile, the range of random shot for their six-pounders, even as the coast appeared to the west, a thin dark green and blue thread, and the tall spire of St. Michael's church rose skyward above The Beacon and the Charleston Light. Caroline wore off the wind a little to the nor'west and Alacrity surged directly up her wake, following the leads and the sea marks for Five-Fathom Hole inside the Charleston Bar, south of the Ship Channel.

  It would be cut exceedingly fine, as Mr. Fellows had predicted; half an hour would spell the difference between Finney's escape or his ruin, of being brought to battle or his gaining American waters.

  "Seven cables, sir," Ballard estimated hopefully. "About fourteen hundred yards. We could try shots from the bow chase guns."

  "It's no good, Lewrie," Commander Rodgers griped, all but wringing his hands. "To fetch him to close-broadsides, we'll have to sail within range of Fort Johnston an' Fort Moultrie. Damme if we ain't but two miles off the Charleston Light now, sir."

  "They do not have a battery to enforce their jurisdiction there, sir," Lewrie countered, drawn from dire musings about something aloft carrying away, of some structural failure which would rob them of the prize at the last second. "We can chase her another two miles farther, out of Five-Fathom Hole, right to the bar, sir. That's what their guns cover, sir."

  "He must bear off more northerly out of Five-Fathom Hole,sir," Ballard suggested slyly. "Might we not wear ship now and cut the angle to close even more?"

  "Splendid, Mister Ballard!" Lewrie grinned. "And begin firing with the larboard battery. I'd admire did you Beat to Quarters, sir." "Chase gun!" Midshipman Parham shouted, spotting a puff of gun-smoke on Caroline's stern. The light ball moaned past the starboard side to skip twice until it buried itself astern. "She has opened her fire upon us, sir!"

  "Mister Harkin, hands wear ship! Mister Neill, larboard your helm. Steer nor-nor'west," Ballard called, as another ball soared by to strike closer to the starboard side. Alacrity went tearing past a local fishing boat busy with her nets, the Americans aboard shaking fists at them, and the black slaves gaping wide-mouthed at the sight of a British warship with all her colours flying. "Beat to Quarters!"

  Alacrity's crew boiled into action, casting off the lashings of the great-guns, fetching handspikes and crows, removing tompions from the muzzles of both batteries, and opening the gun ports. Charges came up from the magazine, shot was selected and rammed home, flintlocks were primed and cocked. "Ready for battle, sir," Ballard reported at last. "We'll bear off a little more to starboard to give the gunners a better angle," Lewrie decided. "Oh. With your permission, Commander, of course."

  "Ahum," Rodgers pondered heavily.

  "Sir, we've come this far!" Lewrie groaned in a soft voice. "A half a mile more? With round-shot?"

  "The repercussions, Lewrie!" Rodgers whispered. "We'll never hear the end of it from the damned Foreign Office, the Admiralty…"

  "Please, sir. There's time enough!"

  "You'll not violate American waters," Rodgers wheedled. "Open fire, Mister Ballard," Lewrie snapped, before Rodgers had a chance to change hi
s mind, interpreting that for a "yes."

  "Larboard yer helm! Mister Fowles, as you bear, sir! Fire!" Ballard shouted at once.

  The forward two-pounder chase-guns rapped out first, followed by the deeper voices of the six-pounders, angled in the portsills as far forward as they might bear. The range was six cables, twelve-hundred yards, with Caroline stern-on to them, a difficult and narrow target. Shot tore the sea around her, close to her waterline, raising towering pillars of spray twice as high as her rails. Her mizzenmast jerked to a hit, and the aftermost lugsail folded in on itself as it was pierced by a ball, before ripping in twain from leech to luff! A ball struck her right on the stern, low on her transom near the rudder and made it twitch once like a dog's ear pestered by a fly.

  "Chain-shot and bar-shot, Mister Fowles!" Lewrie shouted to his grizzled old gunner, who was pacing the gun deck bareheaded. "Play a Frog, and aim high to take his rigging down, sir!"

  It was French practice to open fire at long range with expanding bar-shot, two halves of a round-shot connected by sliding lugs on iron bars, to tear rigging and sails and shatter yards and spars. Chain-shot was two lighter balls, connected by a stout length of links, designed to whirl end over end. British practice was to close beam to beam and aim " 'twixt wind and water" to smash hulls, overturn guns, and shoot crews to rags; to slay, not cripple; to sink, not capture.

  Caroline lengthened as she turned off north in the narrow and shoal-lined channel. Her gun ports flew open. Inexplicably, instead of running, Finney was going to fight it out!

  "Eight side guns to our five, I make it, sir," Ballard pointed out after studying their foe with a spyglass. "Nine-pounders, no less."

  "For what we're about to receive," Lewrie nodded, muttering me old saw, "may the good Lord make us grateful."

  Caroline opened fire, her starboard side erupting in a gush of brownish-gray powder smoke shot through with stabs of quick, hot flame. Alacrity seemed to shudder in fear to the rising moan of round-shot on the air before she was struck, and rose a little on the scend of the sea, as if holding her breath in dread anticipation. A nine-pounder ball struck forward near the larboard anchor cathead, turning part of the bulwarks to flying splinters. Another fell short but skipped over the water to thud home deep in her lower hull amidships, and the sea around her was flayed with close misses, crashing up spray like the breaching of whales.