"Generous hearts, oui, mon general." Junot scribbled hastily, pacing alongside his shorter bantam-roosterish commander.
"… only against tyrants who seek to enslave us, not the common people… against all tyrants. That ought to stir up the shit-pot. Dash off something and show it to me before Saliceti arrives. I will be with these sheep-faced cowards 'til then. Sweetening their cup of gall we just forced them to drink, hein? And Junot?"
"Oui, mon general?"
"More coffee. A lot more coffee!" Bonaparte demanded, laughing out loud, for a rare change. "Ah, signoresl A momentary delay, sirs. Now I may have some coffee with you, if you will permit? Sorry about the spoons and poor cups, but a soldiers portmanteau … I now get along with less than when I was in the Royal artillery…"
And he whirled away, instantly affable, as if he'd just had seven hours sleep, alert and filled with energy.
To placate the vanquished.
Book III
Fuga sub terras, fuga nulla per aurus.
Nec lacrime (neferte preces) superive vocati
pectora nostra movent; aliis rex Iuppiter oris.
Faxo Bebrycium nequeat transcendere puppis
Ulla freturn et ponto volitet Symplegas inani.
No escape is there beneath the earth, none through the air
My heart is proof against tears (no groveling prayers!)
and appeals to heaven;
'tis elsewhere Jupiter counts for king.
I shall see that no vessel sails Bebrycian waters
and that the Clashers dance to and fro on an empty sea.
Argonautica, Book IV, 217-221
Gaius Valerius Flaccus
CHAPTER 1
It was Captain Charlton s thinking that they'd barely gotten on-station to perform the duties they'd been assigned, and it would be the act of timid poltroons to "leg" it back to the shelter of the Fleet at the first setback. He left a letter with the British consul, to go by the next departing merchantman, for Admiral Jervis. But he sent them out to sea. Fillebrowne's Myrmidon would accompany his Lionheart, to hunt off die Italian coast, near Brindisi, whilst Pylades and Jester would sail over to the Balkan side of the narrows and scout the seas nearer to Corfu and the other Ionian Isles, the coasts of Turk-ruled Greece-the Morea- and Venetian-held Albania, to scour the Straits of Otranto.
As soon as they fetched the Balkan coasts, off the Istrian Peninsula and the port of Pola, Lewrie was enchanted. It was so unlike any shore he'd ever beheld, like sailing into some fantasy world. The coasts and isles were steep-to, with hardly any beaches to be seen at the foot, but a thin bearding of gravel. Rough, craggy coasts soared upward, rising dramatically from the brilliant blue waters, which now mirrored azure late-spring skies. And they were timbered… so lushly wooded in pines or gnarled oaks, right down to the sea, except where they were too steep for trees' roots to cling, so steep that the hills were streaked here and there with vertical slashes of bare stone and skree-rock, as stark against the dark green forests as the striations of colour in a Venetian lady's hair.
There were coastal hillocks, folding and rolling like frozen waves, always upwards, always more impressive, until they merged in the misty distance with the true mountains, lightly shaded blue-grey and capped with snow and ice on the furthest, above grey granite and the immense forests.
And that archipelago of isles and islets, that transplanted Bahamas, resembled the erect, dolmenlike islets of the Chinese shore, round the mouth of the Pearl River that led to Canton, as if someone had jammed gargantuan pilings, or whole mountains, into the sea quite recently. Though they were inhabited, for the most part, the woods and crags of the coastal cliffs hid their peoples from view, so that Lewrie could imagine, at times, that they were the first explorers, the very first humans at all, to lay eyes on them.
And when they did stand close enough inshore to eye the coastal villages or towns that clung to the shoreline, they were mostly blank to the sea, walled right down to the water's edge, with windows three floors or more above, crammed so tight together they formed fortified enclaves against invasion.
Like his first sight of Naples a few years earlier, Lewrie s impression of those towns was of dusty, mildewy antiquity, like a Greco-Roman history come to life. There were true walled fortifications he suspected must have been built when the Romans, the Byzantines, ruled this Illyrian province of their respective empires. Grecian, exotic and alien, as otherworldly as an ancient painted frieze atop temples now tumbled in ruin, or the red-black pottery of the Classic periods, with their paintings of awkward, stylised warriors, gods and nymphs.
Some seemed very much like Venice-were Venice unwelcoming and unfriendly-as if a portion of the Grand Canal palaces had been transported, with church steeples and campanile soaring above an unbroken wall of balconies and windows and private boat-landings along the ocean; though poorer, shabbier, and so very much older.
The further they sailed south, though, the belltowers, the watchtowers, and the steeples of churches and cathedrals turned to slimmer, taller minarets, and the gilded onion domes of Eastern Orthodox churches, or Moslem mosques, dominated the towns' toppings, like illuminations from a Byzantine or Arabic atlas.
And the inhabitants of that coast…! They were alien to English eyes, the way they dressed themselves; some in turbans or fezzes, and loose-flowing robes over scruffy pull-over tunics, some in Hindooish, baggy pyjammy trousers, belted jerkins and skullcaps, in sandals or in poor, plebeian bare feet, like the poorest of the poor crofters of Ireland or the wild moors. What few women they could see with the aid of their telescopes at long-distance were hooded, veiled, head-covered or over-smocked like Venetians or Moslems, or cowled or kerchiefed in rusty black or goat-brown, like so many old Italian crones or widows. It was the rare merchant or visitor they espied in anything near to Western apparel. Hungarian, Austrian, Greek or Ottoman, it didn't signify-it was as if Europeans had flown by hot-air balloon to a distant planet to colonise it, but no matter how long or how hard they tried, a European hegemony would never take, not in a thousand more years! Even the cooking smells, the normal airborne effluents a tight-packed village or town produced, seemed otherworldly!
"Sorta reminds me o' Norway, sir," Mr. Buchanon said. "All th' fjords an' such. Wood-timber huts an' houses, where a body can see up the valleys 'at run inland. Poor as church-mice. Handsome, though."
"Aye, Mister Buchanon, it is handsome scenery. And impressive," Lewrie was forced to agree. "Though I still can't quite get the notion out of my head that we've been picked up and dropped on a new planet's seas. And all alone."
He left out the brooding notion he'd also formed; that once put there like Doctor Gulliver by a power unknown, they had no way back! And they would be doomed to Lilliput, Brobdingnag or Yahoo climes forever. Would there be a giant child to pluck them from the sea for playthings, would they tame flocks of Lilliputians to hunt their bread-room rats? Or would they converse with those damned talking horses, eventually?
"Sail ho!"
Just after dawn, the decks were still damp from the daily sluicing and holystoning, and everyone was shivering to a brisk little wind off the Balkan mountains, a Bora that put a touch of ice to a spring day.
Lewrie left off his pewter mug of tea to stand near the middle of the quarterdeck and gaze aloft expectantly, shading his eyes against the sunrise.
"Deck, there!" The lookout expanded on his first report. "Sail ho! One point orf t'star-h'd bows… due South! Full… rigged!"
"Hmm… not a local, then," Lewrie surmised. He turned to gaze at Pylades, a mile or more westward of Jester, and seaward. Both ships were trundling along under all plain sail-courses, tops'ls and top gallants-with the wind on their larboard quarters. Dead Reckoning of the hourly cast of the chip-log during the night placed them about level with the port of Spalato, in Venetian Dalmatia. Before the bows were the large islands of Hvar and Vis, barely visible above the sea. There was a good channel between those two isles, possibly one that this full-
rigged ship, this obviously Western vessel, had used during the night, were she bows-on to them, and only one point to the right of their own bows. "Mister Knolles? Think we might have ourselves a bit of fun this morning, sir. Does she thread the islands…"
"Whereas an innocent trader would chart his course far west of them, sir?" Knolles smirked with sudden insight. "Out to sea of that cluster of islands… Bisevo? Or however one may pronounce them?"
"Very possibly, Mister Knolles." Lewrie grinned. "Pipe hands to breakfast, now, while-"
"Signal, sir!" Midshipman Hyde yelled from the starboard mizzen-mast stays. "Pylades makes… 'Pursue Chase More Closely' 'Inshore' is her second hoist, sir!"
"Bend on and hoist an 'Affirmative,' Mister Hyde," Lewrie replied. "Quartermaster, down-helm. Lay us two points closer to the wind, on a soldier's wind. Mister Knolles, duty-watch to the braces."
"Aye aye, sir."
"Then we'll make sure everyone's had a solid meal before closing yon stranger," Lewrie decided. "Gruel, this morning, if I'm not mistaken, sirs? With a dollop of treacle? A princely dish for a hard morning's work."
"Oh, aye, sir!" the watch-keeping staff on the quarterdeck said with a droll roll of their eyes. "Princely!"
"I'll have a bowl, myself, sirs," Lewrie insisted with mock seriousness. "Once I've gone aloft to 'smoak' our new arrival. Mr. Knolles, you have the deck. Keep my mush hot for me, now."
Once in the mizzen-top, he could see for miles, even with mists rising from a chill morning along the coast, shrouding the isles with a thin blanket of fog. The Chase was a full-rigged, three-masted ship; her top-s'ls or t'gallants were already above the horizon, as she beat into the wind, laid over on starboard tack, and came roughly along a reciprocal course to jester-North by West. Once she espied a brace of warships off her bows, Lewrie imagined, she'd turn and run back the way she came, through the Hvar-Vis channel. She could tack and swing eastward, and run into Venetian waters eventually; perhaps into Spalato itself to take shelter in a neutral port. She could haul off the wind and flee West-no, he groused, that'd lay her open to Pylades or getting entangled in that chain of isles round Bisevo.
And just how did you pronounce 'em? Lewrie wondered, grinning.
Cut between Hvar and Brae, thread the narrow gut between Brae and Solta, should the wind shift? They'd never catch her, then. But, from what he recalled of his last peek at those new Venetian charts, Jester had deep water anywhere she went in pursuit.
Another long minute went by, and still the merchantman stood on her course, as if her lookouts were blind as bats. He could determine that he was looking at t'gallant sails, now with a hint of her tops'ls showing below them-not twelve miles away, and she still didn't see them?
Finally! And it took ya long enough, ya simple bastard! Alan thought smugly. She was hauling her wind, swinging her masts in line with each other and pointing her jib-boom directly at Jester, as if to flee Westward, dodge round the lee of the Bisevo chain, brushing off pursuit. But still blind, Lewrie realized; she hadn't spotted Captain Rodgers's Pylades yet! And when she did…! There! Even close to twelve miles off, he could see her sway, as if startled by a mouse, as she realised the Westerly escape route was blocked by a second warship. And came back hard on the wind once more, putting her masts in line… was she? Yes, Lewrie decided, seeing the first rippling of her canvas… she was going to tack across the wind and flee Easterly!
"Mister Knolles?" Lewrie bellowed down. "A point more to windward. Hands aloft… shake out royals!"
Jester sailed the longer leg of an intersecting triangle between the wind, the Chase, and escape. But she had a long, clean waterline, and the winds pressed clear from the Nor'east, Leading winds or Fair at times, her best points of sail. The Chase was closer to the eye of the wind, Beating. While it felt faster, with a ship's speed combined with the wind's speed, they were fighting against it. The island of Brae lay before her bows, the narrow dogleg channel between Brae and Solta even closer to the wind's eye. She'd have to tack to stand into it, then do another tack to roughly her original course, to follow its winding into safety, all of which would slow her.
Cool, clear morning air, brisk and bracing, filled Jester's sails drumhead taut. The Adriatic was running seas of not over three or four feet, and Jester loped over them, pressed over less than ten degrees from upright, her forefoot and cutwater slicing through them as finely as the keenest butcher's blade, creating a rumbling, hissing, seething clash of foam, a slight yawing and lifting of her stern when the foresails, which lifted the bows, were now and then blanketed by those of the main and the mizzen. But she was gaining… relentlessly. And pointing before the Chase s bows, so that longer leg of intersection she sailed would meet with her long before she gained the islands' shelter.
"Haulini" the lookout shouted. "Chase'z haulin' 'er wind!"
Just shy of the isle of Brae, she was coming about, falling off the wind and showing them her stern. Lewrie stood at the lee bulwark on the starboard side, telescope to his eye, and another mug of tea in peril. He suspected the winds off the Balkan mountains had swung foul farther south, where the Chase lay-were come more Easterly with less Northing, or were altered by the headlands and hills of the islands from the Nor'easterly they enjoyed. She couldn't make the narrow channel without tacking at once, which would run her right back into gun-range! Lewrie turned to espy Pylades, now about three miles alee of Jester, and astern of her starboard quarter, blocking any attempt to turn and run back out the wider channel to the south between Hvar and Vis.
She was, however, well placed for a run through another channel, a little South of East, between Brae's southern shore and the north shore of Hvar! South of Venetian dominion, and safety!
"Half a point free, Mister Knolles. Pursue her more directly," Alan directed. "Mister Buchanon? The local chart, please, sir?"
"Here, sir," that cautious stalwart from the Blackpool fisheries all but chortled in glee. "Oh, 'ey've chose poor, sir. See here…" he said, happily spreading the chart on the traverse board near the binnacle cabinet, amidships by the wheel. " 'Is Hav… Huw… 'is 'break-teeth' island's long an' narrow, nigh on fifteen leagues, end t'end, an' less'n a mile'r two off th' mainland, at th' end of it, if she wishes t'turn the far point, and run back down its southern coast. With 'is wind t'day, I doubt she'd turn North, f'r Brae, or Spalato… same problem she had with 'at other channel. She's sailin' inta th' sack, sir. Her master must know ought o' 'ese waters."
"Or possess Austrian charts." Lewrie snickered as he turned one more time to look astern and alee for Pylades. The signal flags she'd first hoisted still flew; for Jester to pursue closely, and inshore. A flicker of canvas, a slight turn, and Pylades was slowing, well short of the entrance to that southerly channel. She cocked her bows up into the wind, some sails still trimmed to drive ahead, the rest backed or cross-sheeted to check forward motion, as if she'd failed to make it across on a tack-fetched-to, to wait for Jester to take that Chase, or to stay where she could dash off north of Solta, or below Hvar, to intercept if the strange merchantman emerged.
Here we go again, Alan Lewrie thought with a sigh, and recalled times in the Bahamas when Benjamin Rodgers had stood off safe, while he'd been forced to tiptoe through coral reefs with his little gun-ketch, Alacrity. There was no danger here of ripping Pylades' hull open. But someone must be the blocking force. And full post-captains got what they wanted, when compared to a lowly commanders wishes.
It wasn't navigational perils that worried Lewrie this time, no. Diplomatic, perhaps, should he run afoul of a Venetian patrol ship deep in their waters-what Charlton had warned him about. Or be separated from heavier guns in support, a full forty-five miles, should there be a French warship lurking at the far, unseen end of that channel. What other reason could this Chase's captain have to flee East into a sack, unless he expected some help at the far end of it? Lewrie pondered.
"Growl we may, but go we must," Lewrie whispered, lowering his telescope. "Quartermasters… make for midchanne
l."
The merchant ship went out of sight for a few minutes, slipping into the narrow Brac-Hvar channel before them, before they cleared the point. Lewrie took another squint at the chart. The passage began as a narrows, with a low-lying finger of land and a mutton-shoulder point jutting north, once inside. For at least ten miles, the channel was a tight squeeze… perhaps only two miles or less wide. He frowned. Brae was blanketed on the north by tall hills and budding mountains, just the sort that could play "silly buggers" with even the steadiest breeze. About mid-length, the channel widened, turning into a rectangular bay, as Hvar narrowed and flattened like the outline of a cutlass blade.
He jerked his head up suddenly. Shared a worried look with Lieutenant Knolles and Mr. Buchanon in the second moment.
"Gunfire, sir!" Knolles grunted. "Upwind."
"Aloft, there!" Lewrie shouted to the lookouts. "See her?"
"Nossir! Not yet, sir!"
"Damn, damn, damn!" Lewrie spat, stomping round his quarterdeck, resisting the urge to dash forrud, scale the foremast, right to the truck-cap, for a look beyond or over that pestiferous damn point of land that blocked their view!
"Mister Crewe!" Lewrie called down to the waist. "Bosun Cony! Beat to Quarters."
He heard another stuttering, irregular series of distance-muffled, land-blanketed bangs came wafting on the wind.
Jester's crew thundered bare feet on oak planking as they dashed to the artillery, cast off the lashing and bowsings that held the guns secure and the gun-port lids shut. "Beau-Nasty" ships boys came from belowdecks with leather cylinders cradled in their arms, which held the first serge powder cartridges. Gun-captains selected the best of the round-shot from the rope garlands, or the racks that circumferenced the hatchways, looking for shot without scales, rust or dents, to assure that they would fly straight and true. Flintlock strikers were affixed, their flints test-struck; tompions were removed from the muzzles; slow-match was lit and coiled around the water-tubs between the guns, in case the flintlock igniters failed. Water was sluiced from those tubs, where gunners would slave, and kegs of sand were opened to scatter about for sure traction. Aft and below, partitions for mates' cabins, the Marine quarters and the officers' and warrants' gun-room were stripped of furniture, the light deal hanging partitions and doorways swung up out of the way to the deck-heads, or passed lower down to the orlop, so a shot that penetrated Jester's side wouldn't create any more man-killing splinters than necessary.
A Jester’s Fortune l-8 Page 17
