A King's Trade (54 page)

We wear on this wind, we could suffer the same fate,
he thought with a sudden chill, yet;
So could the French! Could I
make
her do it?

The musicians were now staggering up and down between the tiers of guns in the waist, well into a medley of “Banish Misfortune,” “Go to the De'il and
Shake Yourself,” and “The Rakes of Mallow,” and the crew stamped their feet, and their gun-tools, on the deck in time, with the Marine drummer jauntily plying his sticks as if on Sunday parade on the ramparts of Southsea Castle in Portsmouth.

A loud crack, and a lightning flash!

“Mister Langlie, does she look t'be hauling her wind a half a point?” Lewrie demanded. “Putting the wind squarer on her stern?”

“About that, sir,” the First Lieutenant replied, trying to keep a fretful tone from his voice. “Might she be readying to wear?”

“Possibly,” Lewrie said, rubbing his chin and looking aloft at his sails and yards. “Helm up a point, Mister Langlie, bring us back to our original course of Nor'west.”

A look alee showed their merchantmen now off
Proteus
's bows to larboard, after her jog outwards, and their own slight turn away from the threat of the enemy warship. Very disappointingly far off, there was a taffrail light and a masthead fusee to the right of the fleeing Indiamen; HMS
Jamaica
evidently had worn about to the Nor'east and was most likely trying to come up to the wind for a tack, which in such a stiff wind and a rough sea would be nigh-miraculous, should Leatherwood pull it off without getting the “sticks” ripped right out of her.

The French frigate was closing with them, now within less than a mile, but foreshortening, her profile aspect turning more bows-on, just a tantalising bit. To follow the convoy, even if her first attempt had been mis-judged, and her captain now would settle for a stern-chase,
if
he could just get past this pestiferous “Bloodies'” frigate? Would she wear about, shift the winds onto her larboard quarters, duck under HMS
Proteus,
and force Lewrie to chase
her?

“Prepare to come about to larboard, Mister Langlie. I think we will attempt to wear,” Lewrie decided of a sudden. “And, when we do I will have the tops'ls clewed up for the heavy haul, bat-wing them, in ‘Spanish reefs' for a bit, ‘til we're round. That'll ease the strain on the masts and spars,
and
the brace-tenders. That Frog yonder wears, so do we. Hands to stations, and stand ready.”

“Aye, sir,” Langlie replied, though there was a leery squint to his eyes; it
could
have been the driving rain that caused it. “Bosun! Pipe ‘Hands To Stations To Wear'!”

Yet, they stood on for about a minute more, straining for sight of each other, waiting for the lightning to illuminate what their respective foes were doing. Nature obliged with another crackling bolt of lightning, one that seemed to leap
from
the sea, not from the low and racing clouds, a triple forked bolt that jerked across the sky like the flailing arms of a marionette.

“Heads'ls are shivering!” Lt. Langlie yelled, pointing his useless night telescope at the French frigate. “She's going about, sir!”

Sure enough, the enemy was swinging nearly bows-on to
Proteus
's starboard quarter, jib-boom and bowsprit pitching upwards as she rose, fore-and-aft heads'ls getting smothered for air as her fore course came directly downwind and stole the force of the wind. Just as an impenetrable squall of rain swept over her from astern and blotted her out!

“Helm up, Mister Langlie!” Lewrie shouted. “Get us about, quick as dammit! Clew up tops'ls, there!”

And the wear
was
quick, for with so little pressure aloft, the brace-tenders could swing the yardarms just that more easily, despite the gale of wind. And, that new, broader rudder helped her get round, too. “Quartermasters …make your new course Due West!” Lewrie cried.

It was still a staggering, thrashing muddle for hands tending to the freed running rigging, for the gun crews, whose brutally heavy pieces along the larboard side strained breeching ropes and handling tackle ‘til they groaned, with the frigate laid over nearly fourty degrees on her starboard side for a long minute.
Proteus
's hull groaned and creaked, the masts gave out ominous moans, but, there were none of the crackling, popping, or snapping sounds of imminent disaster. The music stopped, of course, with everyone slid over to leeward, and the distraught bushbaby and the rest of the livestock found something new to wail about.

And, as she slowly rolled back upright, as the tumbled waisters, brace-tenders, and gunners got back on their feet and regained control, the curtainlike rain of the squall passed, and the stiff wind lowered its pitch and volume for a moment.

“Let fall the tops'ls!” Lt. Langlie shouted through his speaking trumpet. “Sheet home, sheet home!”

Then, there was the French frigate, now also steering Due West on larboard tack, about a half a mile up to weather and three points off
Proteus
's larboard quarter, sailing parallel with them.

“What d'ye plan t'do,
now,
ye snail-eatin' sonofabitch?” Lewrie roared, cupping his hands to his mouth as if his voice could carry all that way in the storm. “We've dry priming up forrud, Mister Langlie?”

“One would hope, sir!” the First Officer replied, laughing like a hyena to see the French countered.

“Fire a challenge shot from one of the six-pounder chase-guns,” Lewrie demanded, chortling himself. “The only way he gets to the merchant ships is
through us, by God! Let's see if ‘Monsieur Crapaud' has the ‘nutmegs' for a stand-up fight!”

“Mis-ter A-Dair!” Langlie shouted over the din of the weather, and the rush of the sea against the hull as
Proteus
began to step out right-lively under her re-spread sails. “Fire…chase-gun…to…windward!”

The bows dipped in a steady hobby-horse fashion, spray flying up over the beakhead rails, over the top of the roundhouse and forecastle platform, but a 6-pounder's flintlock striker was cocked, then the trigger string tugged, and the chase-gun erupted with a sharpish noise, almost lost against the drum of rain, with a bright red flash, a spurt of grey-white gunpowder, and a shower of bright cloth embers from the cartridge flannel, and the crew cheered some more to know a formal challenge had been made, and the French could not pretend that they hadn't seen it, or the puny feather of ricochet that leaped from the sea before the enemy frigate's bows. Had they
any
honour, combat, warship to warship, broadside to broadside, must be accepted, now.

“She's reducing her main course, sir,” Lt. Langlie pointed out, “and shaking out a reef in her tops'ls.”

“Wants a bit more speed in-hand, aye,” Lewrie agreed, “though she'll not pass ahead of us, and on this wind, there'll be no clever manoeuvring. Being on her lee will work in our favour. Hard as both of us are pressed, she'll not be able to fire on our masts and sails, as they usually do. Can't lower the breeches low enough for that.”

“Whilst we, heeled at this angle, have our choice of shooting at
hers,”
Langlie realised with a smile, “or jamming the quoins fully under
our
guns' breeches, and hull her ‘twixt wind and water, aha! It is quite advantageous for us, sir. My congratulations. The old adage of
always
seizing the weather gage doesn't always avail, it'd seem.”

“Well…” Lewrie replied, shrugging in perplexity for how best to answer, for the tactic truly
hadn't
occurred to him; he merely wished to get to grips, and put himself ‘twixt the enemy and the convoy. And, Langlie “pissing down his back” with praise…that wasn't his typical demeanour. False modesty wouldn't suit; neither would polishing nails on the lapel of his coat to preen, were he baldly honest about it.

Do I owe him money?
Lewrie wondered, in a hard-snatched moment of idleness.

There came another flash of lightning, another peal of thunder, and with it, the burst of a cloud of white smoke on the enemy warship's starboard bow; the challenge had been noted, and accepted.

“D'ye
hear,
there!” yelped the lone lookout who had been sent to the mizen cross-trees to watch their stern, who, ‘til that moment, had little to do except cling like a leech to the swaying mast and hang on for dear life. “Hoy, th' deck!
Second
enemy frigate, two points offa th' starb'd quarter!”

Oh…My…Christ!
Lewrie thought in sudden shivers of dread.

I
t took a further lightning strike on the sea, one more of those lingering, flickering monsters, to espy the second Frenchman from their decks. Smaller than the first, perhaps, or just farther off? She was running “both sheets aft” with the wind right up her stern, to the Nor'west, or a touch West-Nor'west, bounding, pitching, and slithering over the blue-black, white-flecked sea… for the convoy!

“Nothing we can do about it,” Lewrie spat through gritted teeth, his jaw ruefully clenched. “They
do
work in pairs, and in all this excitement, I forgot that, damn my eyes! Nothin' t'be done but shoot the shit out o' this'un, and Devil take the hindmost.”

Which would be
Festival,
the slowest,
Lewrie thought;
the poor, old cow!
For the only taffrail lights still anywhere near enough to be made out clearly were certainly the circus ship's.
Eudoxia!
He cringed, fearful for her in French hands…even if she
had
come within a hair of clawing his eyes out.

“First honours to Mister Adair, and his chase-guns!” Lewrie felt need to shout, to keep his crew's spirit up, and put his own impending fight ahead of anything else. “Let's have tunes more to
his
liking!” he ordered, turning to face the enemy frigate, which was now surging up closer to abeam of
Proteus,
and slowly falling down onto her. Desmond and the other musicians launched into livelier, more Scottish airs—”Campbell's Farewell to Red Castle,” “Hey, Johnny Cope,” “The Flowers of Edinburgh,” and one of Lewrie's old favourites, “The High Road to Linton.”

He stood at the larboard bulwarks, the windward side that was a captain's proper post, clinging against
Proteus's
motion with his left hand on the mizen stays, his right hand beating the tempo of the music …waiting, and shamming utter serenity for his officers and sailors, which was about the hardest thing to do before the iron began to fly.

“Run out the larboard batt'ry, Mister Catterall!” he shouted as the range diminished, and gun-port lids swung up and out of the way to bare their blood-red painted inner faces, stark against the lighter colour of the gunwale hull paint. Black iron muzzles slowly juddered forward as the blocks of the run-out tackles skreakily sang, and everyone could hear Lt. Catterall bellowing at his gun crews in a harsh and loud voice full of blasphemies and good-natured curses for one and all, and their foe, rising to new heights of his burly, rumble-tumble style that had even old salts grinning over his inventiveness.

The Frenchman's gun-ports also opened, her own muzzles seeming to waver as their crews fiddled with their aiming…most likely trying to slide the thick wooden quoins out from under the breeches, with their usual intent to fire high and cripple
Proteus
with chain-shot or star-shot, to take down her masts and sails, and allow their frigate to dash past, and get at the convoy.

He really have his heart in this?
Lewrie had to ask himself, as he steeled himself for the first crashing broadsides. A long slugging match was not what most raider captains had in mind, he knew; the point was to take merchantmen, to pummel a convoy with a rapid strike, cutting out a few before the escorts could intervene and deal out real, cruise-ending damage. Rake in prize-money, and loot, punish the hated
Anglais,
“The Bloodies,” frighten their ships' husbands and sponsors, their insurance cartels, captains, and crews, alarm Admiralty in London, and stop overseas trade, which the British had, but the French did not.

Just a bit closer,
Lewrie silently urged the French frigate;
just a tad. A cable's distance, or less… double-shotted guns can't miss, that close. Can't waste the first, and best, broadside!

“Quartermasters, put your helm down half a point…easy!” he snapped over his shoulder. Take the wind a bit more abeam, put
Proteus
on a broad reach and ease the angle of heel, provide a flatter, firmer deck for the guns…! “Thus!” he cried, now satisfied with the course. “Mister Catterall, at
half
a cable, you may open upon her!”

“Take aim, you rowdy bastards!” Lt. Catterall barked. “On the up-roll… by
broadside…
wait for it! By broadside…FIRE!”