“Should we clear for action, sir?” Wyman asked.
“Not quite yet, Mister Wyman,” Lewrie demurred. “Hull-down, on such a clear day, means she’s ten miles off or more. Plenty of time to ‘smoak’ her. Unless she runs, of course.”
“Hoy, the deck!” Midshipman Elwes cried down. “Schooner rigged, and flying no flag! Sailing abeam the wind, to the Nor’Nor’west!”
“I do, however, desire that we harden up to the wind, sir, and cut the angle on her. Make our course … West by North. Shake out those first reefs in the t’gallants, and stand by, should we need the royals,” Lewrie said, after a peek at the compass.
Lewrie took a telescope of his own and ambled back to the windward rail, braced himself on the mizen stays, and eyed their stranger. The merest sliver of her uppermost hull sometimes loomed up above the horizon as a distant swell lifted her; in another moment, she would be swallowed, leaving only the upper part of her sails visible.
Damme, is she foreshortening? he asked himself with a frown.
“Deck, there!” Mr. Elwes called. “Chase is hauling her wind … turning West-Nor’west! Chase is hoisting gaff stays’ls!”
Foreshortening, aye; showing Proteus her sternquarters. Mr. Elwes might be presumptive in calling her a Chase, but that turn gave Lewrie a premonitory thrill.
“Has she shown any colours yet, Mister Elwes?” Lewrie queried.
“None, sir!”
Lewrie rubbed his unshaven chin, ideas percolating. Even were she British, or neutral and innocent as anything, fear of the French privateers might make a ship run from a strange vessel, one that looked lean and fast like a ship of war, but …
Did the schooner continue West-Nor’west, she could just shave by the northern coast of Antigua, and would be on a perfect course to duck into “neutral” waters in the Danish Virgins, near St. Croix, though by sunset Proteus could surely run her down, with her longer waterline and her much larger sail area.
Or the schooner might try to come about, rounding Antigua, and head Sutherly for St. Kitts. In Antigua’s lee, schooners were two-a-penny, and by full dark she might hope to escape in the gloom, letting another similar schooner be the goat.
Proteus slowly swung onto her new course, her decks heeled over more to leeward as the press of wind on her reset sails made her start to race and surge. She was after a “Chase”; and like a staghound on a firm spoor, like a tiger pacing an Indian millet field after an addled goat, she strode out confidently, surely. Off-watch crewmen were drawn to the deck by the commotion, all but licking their chops in anticipation of a prize.
“This isn’t a cockfight, lads!” Lewrie had to shout. “There’s gundrill to perform. Keep yer eyes in-board, and your minds on your evolutions … ’fore the Bosun and Master Gunner pass among you, with their … reminders?”
Even so, Lewrie knew, the hands would whisper among themselves, try peeking over the gangways or out the windward gun-ports; men aloft would find a way to send the latest observations down to their mateys, no matter what the Bosun, the Master Gunner, the Master At Arms and his Ships’ Corporals threatened—it was simply too much of a novelty!
“Deck, there!” Midshipman Elwes cried. “Chase is hull-up, sirs! She now shows a flag! French colours!”
A hundred horny paws slapped together and rubbed with a sound like dry grit; a hundred voices muttered “good prize!” together, and a palpable frisson of delight and greed swept the decks, making mates, sailors, and officers alike beam with joy, and ships’ boys jig-dance.
Lewrie clapped his hands behind his back, and pondered. If he hoisted the French Tricolour, as well, there was a chance that he might reel this schooner in like a fish, relieved to meet a fellow Frenchman so far from home. A privateer? Lewrie silently mused, more than glad t‘see a National ship? Enough to haul her wind and fetch-to, waitin’ on us?
There was the possibility that a Frog privateer would know the few confirmed French ships of war sailing out of Guadeloupe by sight.
“Mister Wyman,” Lewrie said, with a sly grin, “do you hoist a French flag on the foremast … and run up a ‘who are you?’ where she can see it. Does she answer with a private signal, she’s confirmed, and ours.”
“oh!” Lt. Wyman gawped for a second. “My goodness gracious, I see, sir! Aye, sir! We know the Frog’s ‘qui va la’ signal.”
Moments later it was done, and they waited to see what signal would be hoisted in return. Despite his best intentions (like most of those, Lewrie could rarely keep ’em!) a smug grin creased his face, a “sly-boots” look of cocky satisfaction.
“Deck, there!” Midshipman Elwes cried. “French colour’s down … she’s hoisted Brittish!”
“Hah! Liar!” Lieutenant Wyman commented, all but hooting to his fellow officers, who had also come up to share the excitement.
Well, damme, Lewrie thought, deflated in an instant; Didn’t think o’ that! Could she really be?
He cupped his hands and bellowed aloft, “Mister Elwes, has she changed course? Reduced sail? Hoisted any signal at all?”
“No, sir! Still running! Same course, and no private signal!”
“Damn!” Lewrie griped softly. “Mister Wyman, get that Frog rag and signal down, then. Hoist our own colours, and this month’s recognition signal. And ready a forecastle gun to fire to leeward.”
“Aye, sir.”
The Red Ensign went up the foremast, a string of code flags was bent on and hoisted, followed a minute or two later by a single cannon shot. The schooner was closer now, not over four miles off as Proteus swiftly strode up to her with a bone in her teeth.
“Deck, there! Chase now bears Nor‘west by West! I think I see stuns’ls! No reply to signals!”
“Dammit, make our heading Nor’west by North, Mister Wyman, and hoist royals,” Lewrie snapped, now irritated. “And once that’s done, we’ll beat to Quarters, and ready the larboard battery!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
Proteus heeled a bit more, her wake and bustle growing louder and more insistent. Three-quarters of an hour, and the schooner grew larger as they closed the range to three miles, no matter how swiftly the schooner scudded along in flight. She had lowered British colours long before, seeing that the ruse was fruitless. Hands stood swaying behind the great-guns, already loaded with the smoothest and roundest solid iron balls, charged with powder, and the newfangled flintlock strikers primed.
“Ease that quoin out even more, there, lads,” Lt. Catterall told his larboard gunners. “We’re heeled, and shooting to leeward, so keep the barrels aimed high. We’ll adjust once we’re close and the ports are open, so you can mark your target and gauge the range.”
“Mile and a half, I make it, sir,” Lt. Langlie volunteered from his place near Lewrie on the lee rails. “Almost Range-to-Random-Shot, for the six-pounder chase gun.”
“We’ll wait ’til the larboard battery can bear, Mister Langlie,” Lewrie countered, slowly pacing, now dressed in his second-best uniform, with his sword at his side, and the sweat trickling down his back and itching icily on his spine. “I doubt yon schooner mounts anything heavier than a four-pounder. Once we’re near abeam, with the guns run out, perhaps this ‘M’sieur’ will gain some sense, and strike before we have to blow him out of the water.”
“Antigua, to leeward, there … I think,” Lewrie heard Lieutenant Devereux, their Marine officer, say. “And Barbuda, off our starboard bows?” he opined, jutting his chin towards a greyish hump on the horizon. “No, couldn’t be … Sergeant Skipwith?”
“Sure I don’t know, sir,” Skipwith commented.
“Still an hundred miles to leeward, sir,” Lt. Langlie took time to inform their senior “Lobsterback.” “Well, a day’s sail, by now. I expect you’re mistaking squalls on the horizon for islands. Were Barbuda and Antigua this close, we’d see them plain. The channel between is only thirty-seven miles, d’ye see … .”
“Half a day, in chase,” Lewrie muttered. And he still had not gotten his chin shaved!
The galley fires had been doused and dinner had been delayed, the crew’s hunger only slightly eased with hardtack biscuit, water, and dry, crumbly Navy Issue cheese. Of course, the rum ration had been doled out; some customs were observed no matter what.
“Three-quarters of a mile, now sir,” Lt. Langlie pointed out.
“Mister Wyman!” Lewrie called down to the Second Lieutenant by the foremast, now in charge of the starboard guns. “One chase gun to windward! Let her know our intentions!”
“Aye, sir!”
A windward gun was a challenge to battle, and a threat. Strike your colours, haul up, and fetch-to … or else!
Bang! The foc’sle 6-pounder barked out a blank charge, billowing a sour cloud of maggot-pale gunsmoke that was quickly scudded off to larboard, across the forecastle, by the Trades that were now almost abeam Proteus’s deck. Lewrie, along with every senior man allowed the liberty of the quarterdeck, lifted a telescope to see what answer was forthcoming.
Like most stern-chases, hours could pass before any noticeable progress was made, then all of a sudden, the Chase would leap within spitting distance in an eyeblink, no matter that her sails still drew, her wake still seethed, the mustachio under her bows still flung spray so busily about her … as if she’d grown weary of it all, and meant to surrender to her fate.
“Quarter-mile, I make it, now, sir,” Lt. Langlie observed.
“Open the larboard gun-ports and run out, Mister Langlie. Hull the bitch, when nicely abeam,” Lewrie coldly replied, his eyes gone as grey as Arctic ice, as was his wont when angered or in action.
“Sir!”
There was a puff of smoke upon the schooner’s bows, then a tinny, flat bang from a lee-side gun, the sound masked by her sails and hull, muffled by the wind’s roar and the onward rushing sshhuush of Proteus’s hull. She had fired a leeward gun, in sign of peaceful intent … or to signify her surrender?
A second or two later, down came her patently false British colours, as if she had indeed struck, but … up went a “gridiron” flag, a busy banner of red and white horizontal stripes, with a canton of blue, splattered with stars, in one corner!
“An American? Mine arse on a band box!” Lewrie exclaimed.
“Another sham!” Lt. Langlie all but spluttered at their gall.
“No, sir, look!” Midshipman Adair cried, pointing. “Her hoist! That is this month’s private signal, sir.”
“You’re sure, Mister Adair?” Lewrie gawped at those pennants, spinning to face the midshipman.
“Quite sure, sir. See, here in my copy book, it’s …”
“Dammit!”
“She’s let fly her sheets, Captain,” Lt. Langlie said, drawing Lewrie’s attention back to the schooner.
She had freed her large gaff-hung fore and main sails, letting them flag and clatter almost abeam the wind, no longer cupping power from it, keeping the outer and inner flying jibs standing, but hauling down the foretopmast stays’l and those upper gaff stays’ls. Without those sails, she was now slowing like a bowling coach being reined in and braked!
“Well … hoist the proper damn’ reply, Mister Adair,” Lewrie snapped. “The gun crews to stand easy, Mister Langlie.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Half the damned day we’ve chased this silly clown, and it is only now he has wit t’recall he’s a Yankee, that we’re almost allies?”
Proteus would pass within an hundred yards of the schooner, and would spurt past her rapidly, with all her top-hamper still drawing, t‘gallants, royals, and stuns’ls rigged on the windward yards; all that sail blanketing what wind the schooner could receive in her lee.
“Christ, it’ll take an hour t’work back to her!” he growled.
He took Langlie’s brass speaking-trumpet and crossed to the lee rails to speak her whilst he could, before they left her in their dust!
“Who the hell are you?” Lewrie ungraciously bellowed.
“United States Treasury Department cutter, the Trumbull!” came the thin reply. “Lieutenant Gordon, master! And you?”
“You bloody idiot! This is His Brittanic Majesty’s frigate, Proteus … Captain Lewrie, commanding. You’d think you could’ve—”
But they were past by then, surging along at better than ten or eleven knots.
“Mister Langlie, get way off her,” Lewrie snarled, turning inboard. “Strip us down to all plain sail. Then we’ll wear down below her, tack and round up windward of her. I’ve a bone t’pick with that … that … ! Mister Wyman … Mister Catterall! Worm out your shot and charges, and secure from Quarters! Goddammit!”
He’d wasted most a day’s sail chasing a pluperfect fool! Even worse, he’d been made to look the fool before his officers and men!
“And Mister Langlie?” Lewrie fumed, glowering.
“Aye, sir?”
“Whilst we perform all those evolutions in plain sight of that Yankee Doodle, I’ll want everything done to a very salty Tee!”
“All hands! All hands!” Lieutenant Langlie bawled, accepting his trumpet back and turning away to hide in furious activity.
As topmen raced aloft to fist and fight canvas, to haul in and reduce sail, deflate the set of the stuns’ls, clew them to the booms and haul them in along the permanent yards, Proteus slowed and soughed into the brilliant tropic waters, sighing and groaning as her timbers resettled, like a racehorse taking a cool-down lap round the turf.
Minutes later, the royals were furled, gasketed, and the thin yards lowered to the cross-trees, the t’gallants two-reefed, and hands piped to Stations to Wear. The schooner was by then at least four or five miles astern, plodding along somewhat like an ignored hound under plain sail, as if unsure of following its master all the way to the end of the drive. She continued to plod while Proteus wore downwind, took the Trades on her larboard side for the first time in weeks, and began to “reach” back across the wind on an opposing course, about two cables below the schooner.
“Mister Adair, assumin’ this slack-jawed Yankee can actually be able to read, do you hoist ‘Take Station In My Lee,’” Lewrie sneered.
“Aye aye, sir.”
“I’ll put her off our larboard quarters before we tack, sir?” Lt. Langlie asked, hands behind his back, where, Lewrie strongly suspected, he still had his fingers crossed for luck.
“Too bad we can’t shave his transom, Mister Langlie. By the by. A creditable showing for our erstwhile allies … so far, that is.”
“Uhm, thankee kindly, sir,” Langlie replied with a gladsome grin … though tempered with a First Officer’s usual quick moue for all the things that could yet go “smash,” and at the very worst possible time.
“At your discretion, Mister Langlie.”
“She replies ‘Affirmative,’ sir,” Midshipman Adair announced.
The schooner began to fall off the wind, all but pointing her bowsprit and jib-boom at Proteus’s midships!
“Damn him, I didn’t mean come under my lee right bloody now!” Lewrie barked. “Wait ‘til she she’s well off our larboard quarters before we tack, Mister Langlie. A longer board close-hauled before the tack, as well. Mister Adair, haul that signal down. Hoist ‘Hold Course.’”
“Aye, sir!”
The schooner dithered, swinging back to abeam the Trades, while Proteus surged past once more, rapidly falling astern.
“Safe enough, now, I should think, Mister Langlie.”
“Aye, sir. All hands … Stations for Stays!”
Proteus swung up onto the wind, close-hauled and heading to East-Sou’ east, her hands freeing braces, tacks, and sheets. Langlie left it for a long moment, rocking upward on the balls of his booted feet before opening his mouth to shout through the speaking-trumpet.
“Quartermaster, ease down the helm. Ready, ready!” Lt. Langlie cried, waiting, turning and swivelling about, eyes everywhere for this maneuevre. “Helm’s alee … rise, tacks and sheets!”
HMS Proteus, for all her length and tonnage, was a lively one, and she came up to the wind
briskly, jibs clattering, the spanker aft eased amidships and driving, the foretops’l flat a’back, swinging easily until … “Haul taut! Now, mains’l haul!” and she was across the eye of the wind, the deck swaying upright, then canting leeward, yards swinging, blocks clanging, and canvas rattling like musketry.
“Stars above, if he hasn’t come up close-hauled!” the Sailing Master Mr. Winwood exclaimed, coming as close to blasphemy as that good man might ever dare.
Lewrie spun about to glare at the Yankee schooner, chilling, as the thought struck him that, were she truly a French privateer that had captured a set of private signals, now would be the very best time to fire, with Proteus and her crew still all sixes-and-sevens, everything in the running rigging still free, her guns unloaded, run in, and bowsed snug to the bulwarks! Even a puny broadside of pop-guns could confuse the crew, turn their tack into a bloody shambles, whilst a bold French privateersman could swing up to windward—like the schooner was doing! —and scamper full-and-by to weather, pointing higher than ever a square-rigged frigate could attain, into the open, empty seas east of Barbuda, giving them a Gallic horselaugh, and with a tale to gasconade about the entire Caribbean!
No, Lewrie took note; Proteus had completed her tack, and would block this so-called Treasury Department cutter on her present course.
’Course, does she hold her course, she’ll ram us! he thought; I don’t see more’n thirty hands, all told, and all o’ them hangin’ in her riggin’ for a good look-see!
“Very good, Mister Langlie. Now, stand aloof of that hen-head, ’til we may cock up into the wind and fetch-to. Mister Adair?” Lewrie bawled.
“Aye, sir?”
“A second hoist, young sir. Tell that aimless bastard to ‘Fetch To.’ Leave ‘Come Under My Lee’ flyin’. Is God merciful, even he might get our intent. Then, should he actually fetch-to in our lee, I will wish you to lower both of those, and hoist ‘Captain Repair On Board.’ Smartly, now … go!”
Again, like a hound warned away from the promise of fresh meat when a hog was slaughtered in the barnyard, the schooner shied off the wind to roughly abeam, leaving a thankful gap between them and ending the imminent threat of collision, as Proteus began the evolution for fetching-to, with some sails still drawing on starboard tack, driving forward, and others backed to snub her progress.
Sea of Grey Page 11
