The Gun Ketch

by Dewey Lambdin

  "Might have sheltered 'round north of us, sir, nearer the Bank, and we'd never have known it," Lewrie commiserated. "By Indian Cay."

  Damme, all this folderol for nothing, then, he griped to himself? And I still haven't had me breakfast! Hmm... still...!

  "Ah, sir," Lewrie added. "You took their prize back, and they were running here."

  "The storm, dammit!" Rodgers groused.

  "Not in the morning, sir," Lewrie said slyly. "And once they were aware a storm was building, they still ran for a lee shore during the afternoon? Doesn't make sense. Unless they had someplace specific in mind. Some hidey-hole. An uninhabited cay somewhere in the Little Bahama Bank where they felt snug. And a place to ride out a storm."

  "Damme, but you're a knacky 'un, Lewrie! Of course!" Rodgers realized with a grin. "Where they thought Whippet couldn't follow 'em! You were right about Doyle's hideout, you may be right in this. Now look you here, sir."

  "Aye, sir?"

  "I draw twelve feet forrud, so I dasn't risk the Banks, but I could cruise offshore. You draw ... ?"

  "Eight and a half, sir," Lewrie replied, getting a sudden onset of nerves. Damme, here we go again, tiptoeing through coral!

  "North of Memory Rock yonder, there's a ten-fathom pass," Commander Rodgers schemed, oblivious to the harm Alacrity might suffer on this mission. "Mister Cargyle! Chart!" he shouted over his shoulder to summon his sailing master the way one would shout for a slow-coach waiter. "Ah, here! We both could enter. I'lltake the deeper water between Middle Shoal and the Lily Sand Bank, nor'east across the Bank to just north of Matanilla Reef. Alacrity will go inshore of me to exit through the Walker's Cay Channel farther south and east, and we meet up there. Then we'll both have a peek at Walker's Cay. 'Tis a famous pirate's lair of old. Mayhap these buggers're usin' it again!"

  "Aye, aye, sir," Lewrie answered, knowing what Lieutenant Coltrop down in the Turks had felt like at last.

  "Don't get too close to Walker's Cay, don't spook 'em out too soon, Captain Lewrie," Rodgers warned him. "If they're there."

  "Should I be so fortunate as to get across the Bank in a whole vessel, I'll not, sir," Lewrie commented wryly.

  "Still have that Trinity House sailing master, Gatacre aboard?"

  "No, sir," Lewrie sighed. "Commodore Garvey promoted his first officer off Royal Arthur into the schooner I took, and sent 'Dread-Nought' away to survey the east coast of Andros."

  "So Lieutenant Garvey is now third in Royal Arthur," Rodgers grunted.

  "Rising like a spring tide, his career does, sir."

  "Gawd, old 'Horry' must bloody love you these days!" Rodgers laughed. "Right, then! Off you get. Trinity House pilot or no."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Lewrie scrambled over the side into the stern sheets of his gig for a lumpy ride back to Alacrity after the salute had been paid to him. The sea was still fractious in the wake of the storm, and he held on for dear life.

  At last, he thought, though; I'll get my coffee, my shave, and my bloody breakfast!

  Chapter 7

  As the crow flies, it was only forty miles sailing from the deep-water entrance on the western side of the Little Bahama Bank, roughly eight miles north of Memory Rock, to deep water on the east side, in the middle of Walker's Cay Channel.

  In the wake of the storm, though, the winds had gone lunatic. One hour they might have nor'easterlies, the next hour they'd clock around from the north or the nor'west The morning's watch had been sailed nearly close-hauled to weather, but in the afternoon, they even had winds up the stern from the west.

  It took Alacrity all that first day to navigate her way eastward to the Lily Bank in waters than ran from twenty-seven to thirty feet deep, but near sunset, they encountered shallows not fifteen feet deep, and there was no pass through the Lily Bank and its myriad sand bars which lay bare or awash, with thousands of sea birds crying and wheeling over them as they fed on tiny reef fish or mollusks.

  They anchored at true dark at about 78°32' west and 27° 10' north at the Lily Bank's southeast extremity, having covered only a heartbreaking thirty-two miles, eight tantalizing miles short of Walker's Cay.

  Just a bit before sunrise the next morning, they found depth enough and open water to the nor'east, except for one quick fright when it shoaled around a circular submerged outcropping from eighteen feet deep to a bare ten. Then, within musket-shot of the northern side of Walker's Cay Channel, they'd shaved the topaz shallows of Matanilla Reefs southernmost tip to give the island a wide enough berth so any pirates in harbour would not be alerted, but giving Alacrity's lookouts a chance to spy out the anchorages.

  They then headed out to sea to meet Whippet and report.

  "Your schooner is there, sir!" Lewrie told Rodgers in his cabin, which Lewrie had to admit was even fancier than his own. "May not be your pirate schooner, but a schooner. And a three-masted ship, too."

  "How near did you go?" Rodgers fretted. "Think they saw you?"

  "No, sir," Lewrie grinned. "We struck our topmasts and reefed the gaff courses and jibs low to the deck, then kept off seven miles, with only our lower masts and fighting tops showing. They showed no sign of alarm, long as we had 'em in sight."

  "Damned good, Lewrie!" Rodgers nodded in relief. "They must think we're still huntin' 'em off Grand Bahama, or goin' all the way north-about outside the Little Bahama Banks. Where exactly?"

  Lewrie spun the chart around on the table, so everyone couldhave a good view; he and Rodgers, the sailing masters Fellows and Cargyle, and the first officers.

  "They're in this long tongue-shaped inlet north and west of the island proper, sir," Lewrie sketched out. "They've rocks and shoals to their nor'west on the east side of Walker's Cay Channel, coral and exposed rocks north, and shallows on the east to Seal Cay. But there is a chain of tiny islets running nor'west from the western tip of the island. They're anchored here, half a mile or less off the beach by the last one west. They must have fifteen to eighteen feet depth in there, sir."

  "Sand bars on the south side of Walker's Cay, too, sir," John Fellows stuck in. "They trail off south then east all the way to this Grand Cay. And there's reputed to be a one-fathom shoal sou'west of the island. About here, perhaps. Making one entrance channel into their sheltered inlet off those islets, sir."

  Lewrie thought it odd that Cargyle said nothing at all, but he put that down to the man having been daunted by Rodgers' aggressive personality in the past. He thought it an unproductive relationship.

  "They're in a cul-de-sac!" Rodgers elated. "If that shoal you suspect does lie to the sou'west, Mister Fellows, then there are only two escape routes. They come to deep water in Walker's Cay Channel and run out that way, or they take the eastern side of your shoal back down south over the Little Bahama Bank again. How big is it?"

  "No one knows, sir, sorry to say," Fellows fidgeted nervously. "But... from the south end of this shoal nor'west of the island, one could reasonably expect a channel into the anchorage, and this long tongue inlet where they are moored of perhaps... mile and a half?"

  "And were Whippet to be in the middle of that channel north of your mysterious shoal at dawn, her guns could cover anything that moved!" Rodgers sighed with pleasure. "And here is where I wish your Alacrity on the morrow, Captain Lewrie!"

  Oh, bloody suffering Hell, Alan thought as he saw where Commander Rodgers was jabbing at the chart.

  "You enter Walker's Cay Channel ahead of us, go south and east until you get 'round the six-foot shoal that forms the two channels, and block the southern one. Your guns have as much reach as mine, so we have them between us to squeeze! If they can anchor a proper ship that far up this tongue of deep water, then we can sail right up and give 'em broadsides at pistol-shot range from two directions."

  "I see, sir," Lewrie nodded.

  "Feel game for one more quadrille 'cross this bloody little pond, sir?" Rodgers demanded, much amused.

  "Of course, sir!" Lewrie replied with false ardor. To get to the desired position by
sunrise, and sunrise would be best if Rodgers wished tactical surprise, he would have to take Alacrity back through the three-mile span of Walker's Cay Channel in the dark, grope about like a blind man with a cane tapping against the curbs and cobbles, avoid a shoal no one knew the extent of, then round it and feel his way into artillery range in that southern channel which could not be a mile wide at best!

  Now I know why Lieutenant Coltrop turned so pale, Alan thought! This is going to be trickier than falling downriver from Chatham from one stream anchor's grapple to the next! At least sane people try that in broad daylight!

  "That's my lad, Captain Lewrie!" Rodgers praised. "I knew you had the bottom for it!"

  "Long as I have a bottom under me by tomorrow noon, sir," he rejoined with a wry expression.

  "And a half, two!" the leadsman cried mournfully, telling his depth marks on the lead-line by feel. Alacrity showed but one light on the quarter-deck, the lantern in the compass binnacle, and even it was shielded by a tent of canvas.

  "Bloody wonderful," Lewrie complained softly. "Wind's right up our arse. The current's running dead-set against us. And the chip log's no clue to our speed, 'less we take time to anchor and measure the flow. And to top it off, 'tis darker than a cow's gut tonight!"

  "Who'd be a seaman, hey, sir?" Arthur Ballard chuckled back.

  Ballard had the sometimes infuriating capacity to take a great deal of joy in having his seamanship tested to the ultimate by what a reasonable man would have thought a stomach-churning horror. Lewrie would have put it down as insanity, or sublime ignorance of the consequences had he not seen Ballard's keen intellect at work, judging to a nicety his own, and the ship's, limits. Infuriating he might be, but Alan was beginning to find Arthur Ballard a calming influence for his own "windier" moments. As long as Arthur Ballard was composed, he could assume there wasn't much to get panicked about!

  "We should be southerly 'nough now, sir," Fellows muttered from the darkness. "Walker's Cay should be nor'east of us, and astern."

  "Very well, Mister Fellows," Lewrie allowed. "Mister Ballard, time to alter course. Lay us abeam the wind, course due east."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Ballard replied, sounding game for anything. "Bosun, no pipes. Hand to the sheets and braces. Off belays and haul taut, ready to come about."

  "Two fathom!" the leadsman called out forward.

  "Helm alee, Mister Neill," Ballard commanded. "Course due east. Nothing to weather. Ease sheets and braces, Mister Harkin!"

  Alacrity came about slowly, with care, her rehoisted tops'l yards creaking, her courses rustling and mewing as the wooden balls of the hanks that bound sails' luffs and boom throats to the lower mast shifted to a new angle. Blocks squealed aloft as the tops'l lift lines were run to re-set the upper yards level to the sea for a more efficient use of the night-wind's power. Gaffs and booms gave out croaks as they bound for a moment as they tilted.

  They'd been running before a northerly wind, sailing no faster than it could blow. Now, with wind abeam, they could feel the night's close, balmy tropic damp turn just the slightest bit chill as the wind soughed across the deck. Alacrity began to pick up a little speed as well, her bow rising and dipping.

  And then it dipped, rose ... and stayed there!

  "One fathom, Christ!" the leadsman wailed.

  Well, shit, we've run her aground! Lewrie groaned silently. He had been filled with so much tension, so much dread of ripping her hull open on coral, that a soft, almost unfelt grounding on mud and sand was a relief, and he found himself almost shivering with humor.

  "B'lieve we found that shoal for you, Mister Fellows," he said with a lazy drawl, loud enough for everyone aft to hear, and the deck exploded with nervous laughter.

  "Ahem," Fellows grunted in the dark. "Shit!"

  "Grounded gentle enough, though," Lewrie said, going to the side to peer over to leeward. Dark as the night was, he could see, or only imagined he could see, a faint, rippling line of disturbance, lit with eery phosphorescence that ran south and east from Alacrity's bows as the northward-set current brushed the shoal and folded back under and over itself. He walked back towards his staffs shadows.

  "Mister Ballard, let go course sheets, so she won't drive forrud. Flat-in the jibs. The wind will push the bows south, and this current may be strong enough to walk the stern north to ease us off."

  "Aye, aye, sir. Fo'c's'le captain, flat-in yer sheets!"

  "Mister Parham, what's the chip log doing?" Lewrie asked.

  "Streaming abeam to weather, sir," the midshipman answered from the taffrail at the very stern.

  "Long as we're not going anywhere for a few minutes, take a cast of the log, Mister Parham, and determine the current," Lewrie said calmly, grinning widely.

  Damme, I must be getting right good at this nautical humbug, he told himself; I haven't cursed or yelped yet!

  With her fore-topmast stays'l run up and flatted-in with the inner and outer flying jibs for leverage, Alacrity began to shuffle, to slowly pivot about on her bows, with the current shoving against her side.

  "Helm up hard aweather," Lewrie ordered to assist the current.

  "Knot and a quarter, near as I can make it, sir," Parham told him a few minutes later.

  "Thankee, Mister Parham. That'll require we steer a point, or point and a half to loo'rd to make due east, Mister Neill."

  "Aye, aye, sir," the senior quartermaster responded stolidly.

  There was a shudder, a faint groan, and a rushing noise over the side as the bows came off at last, and Alacrity began to sail to the south once more, leaving behind a swirling eddy of mud and sand.

  "Due south, nothing to larboard for now. Sheet home courses for a run, Mister Ballard. Mister Fellows, do you think we should let her have her head for at least a mile before we try that again?"

  "Aye, sir," Fellows replied. "And sou'east at first, sir, not due east. Just in case."

  "Very good, Mister Fellows. Carry on, Mister Ballard," Lewrie replied. "Oh, one more thing, Mister Ballard."

  "Sir?"

  "Damned odd, but it's so dark tonight, I thought I could see a trail of blue or green fire in the water, where the shoal was, right along the edge. As our wake appears in tropic waters sometimes. Do you see it out there, sir?"

  "Uhm ... not really, sir."

  "Who among the hands has remarkable eyesight?"

  "Mister Early, the quartermaster's mate, sir," Ballard replied, shivering with a touch of awe.

  "Post him amidships on the larboard gangway to windward, facing the shoal out yonder. Have him sing out should we have to bear away if it gets too near. Summon him, and I'll point it out to him."

  "Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard gulped. He'd heard tales of such feats, the uncanny lore of the truly great old seamen, had thought he had some touch of the gifts sometimes, such as in almost being able tofeel the return scend against the hull of waves rebounding from unseen land.

  But he never thought to see them in such a casual captain as their idle, devil-may-care "Ram-Cat" Lewrie!

  "Damme, but we got away with one that time, did we not, sirs?" Lewrie chuckled, breezy with relief and filled with good humor still.

  "Aye, sir."

  "Hellish good fun, for a time, too, damme if it wasn't!"

  "Oh, aye, sir," Mr. Fellows groaned. "Fun!"

  Chapter 8

  "Hands is eat, sir. Galley fire's doused overside. An' it lacks a quarter-hour to proper sunrise at six bells, sir," the bosun Harkin reported.

  "Very well, and thank you, Mister Harkin," Lewrie replied as he hitched his sword's slim baldric into a more comfortable position under his coat "Mister Ballard, hands to stations to hoist anchor and get under way."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Alacrity had been anchored with her bows pointed north towards Walker's Cay, three miles south of the island, a mile short of where the southern channel narrowed. They hauled her up to her bower with muscle power on the capstan and the help of the current, letting out the stream hawser as they went Sails
were hoisted and sheeted home, and as she strained to begin sailing, they buoyed the bitter-end of the stream cable, let it slip, and were under way in a twinkling.

  The winds were more nor'westerly that morning, which would be a "dead muzzier" for any ship attempting to flee out the channel that led west from the anchorage and into Walker's Cay Channel. To short-tack in such a narrow gut would be an invitation to disaster, so one escape route was effectively blocked already, and Whippet would have the winds large on her larboard quarter when she drove down the passage with her nine-pounder carriage guns run out and loaded.

  "Mister Ballard, beat to Quarters," Lewrie snapped. His men were ready, knowing what the morning would hold. They were blooded by one success, and trained by constant practice to a high level of proficiency. They were almost cheerful as they cast off the lashings of the artillery, rolled them back to loading positions inboard, and prepared their pieces for firing.

  "Wind's backed a piece," Fellows commented, eyeing the commissioning pendant aloft as it swung to stream more abeam. "And holding. Might have westerlies once the sun's up and hot."

  "Better that than heading us and short-tacking up this damned channel," Lewrie agreed, smiling in anticipation. He felt there was something most agreeable about having Rodgers in command, with none of the awesome burden of decision upon his shoulders this once, and a clear and subordinate role to play. After his independent cruise in the Caicos, this was as easy as sailing with a full squadron.

  "Whippet!" the lookout shouted from aloft. "Four points off the larboard bows, 'bout three mile off, sir! Enterin' the pass!"

  "Got 'em, by Jesus!" Fellows cheered.

  "That puts us about... four miles south of their anchorage?" Lewrie guessed. "Speed, Mister Mayhew?"

  "Uhm ...!" the midshipman stalled as he cast the chip log in haste. "Six knots, sir!"

  "Half an hour to close-broadsides, then," Lewrie calculated in his head. "A quarter-hour if they get under way and try to fight their way out. Aloft, there! What's happening in the anchorage?"