Hostile Shores (47 page)

Half an hour later, and the frigate was ready for combat, and the only step left was to load, prime, and run out. Lewrie called for everyone to stand easy. He went to the lee bulwarks to larboard and raised a telescope to peer at their stranger past the wind-curved jibs.

“I can make out her t’gallants and tops’ls, now, from the deck,” he said to Lt. Westcott as he crossed back to amidships. “She’ll be hull-up in the next half hour. Time t’shake our lazy night reefs out, Mister Westcott, like our idle merchantmen do, and make more sail … except for the main course, which we’ll have to brail up before fire is opened, anyway. Chain slings on the yards whilst you’re at it, and rig the boarding nettings in-board of the bulwarks, out of sight ’til needed.”

“Aye, sir. Colours?” Lt. Westcott asked, peeking aft at the bare gaff and spanker boom line.

“Not ’til she breaks out hers,” Lewrie decided, pausing, then grinning impishly. “We’ve Spanish Colours in the flag lockers? Damme, I wonder what our stranger’d make o’
that
! Or, do we have a British merchant ensign … I wonder which’d tempt him more!”

I’m
pretty
sure she’s Spanish,
Lewrie mulled over to himself as his First Officer tended to making more sail, and the rigging of the slings and anti-boarding nets;
I don’t think there’s a Dutch warship in the entire South Atlantic, and God only knows what’d draw a French ship this far afield. A British merchant flag t’lure her on, or show them a Spanish flag, and bring her out to
warn
a fellow countryman to the British invasion? God, that’d be rich! And she’d be put off her guard, her gun crews stood down.

“Deck there!” a lookout called down. “Th’ Chase’z hoistin’
British
Colours!”

“The Devil ye say!” Lewrie barked, going back to the bulwarks to lift his telescope once more. Sure enough, even from the deck, he could make out the merest hint of bright bunting, an imitation of the Union Flag.

“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie hooted. “I’ll wager ye that her captain thinks he’s a clever ‘sly boots’, Mister Westcott! Hoist the Red Ensign, if ye please. Show him we’re a fat, dumb merchantman. And everyone look
relieved,
haw!” he called to the officers and men on the quarterdeck. He looked aft to watch Midshipman Shannon and the hands of the Afterguard bending on and hoisting the Red Ensign on the spanker’s boom peak. “When we’ve fetched her fully hull-up, we’ll put up our number in this month’s code book, and see what the Dons make of that.”

We can fight her under the Red Ensign,
Lewrie thought, tautly smiling;
It’s the Navy’s Red Squadron flag, too. Nobody’ll fault me for opening fire under false colours, not this time!

In 1794, when he’d first had command of the old
Jester
sloop, he hadn’t had false French colours lowered and Navy colours run up before delivering one broadside, and he’d been criticized for it in enemy newspapers, and Nelson himself had torn a strip off his arse.

“Sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton cried from his perch halfway up the larboard mizen mast shrouds. “She’s almost hull-up!”

Lewrie gave him a wave in recognition, then went to the forward edge of the quarterdeck and the cross-deck hammock stanchions. “Mister Spendlove?” he called to the Second Officer, whose post when at Quarters was between the two batteries of guns. “Run in the guns and load, but do not prime … both batteries.”

“Load, but do not prime, aye, sir!” Spendlove called back.

He tried to peer at the enemy warship—for that was what she had revealed herself to be by hoisting false colours—from the larboard corner of the quarterdeck, but the fore course and billowing jibs were in the way. He crossed over to his proper place to windward, and got a better view. She was almost bows-on to
Reliant,
all of her sail plan now visible above the horizon, and perhaps only nine miles off. She seemed to be hardening up to the wind a point or so, trying to sneak up and steal the wind gage, intending to pass close aboard and deliver her first broadside from her starboard guns into
Reliant
’s starboard side.

Lewrie collapsed the tubes of his telescope, hunched into his coat, and pondered, frowning in concentration. How
would
he fight her? The slant of wind limited how far to starboard he could turn and surprise her by wheeling “full and by”. That morning wind was fresh enough at the moment, but could weaken before both ships got within gun-range. Serving her a broadside from his larboard guns and bow-raking her would be too chancy.

It was a given for Royal Navy captains to gain the weather gage, upwind of a foe where one’s ship could steal wind from the foe’s sails, and command when one fell down alee to musket-shot or pistol-shot. Sometimes, though, the leeward ship, heeled over to larboard in this instance, could elevate her guns higher, whilst the enemy’s guns were depressed, even with the elevating quoins fully out.

It’ll be a passin’ engagement,
Lewrie stewed, pursing his lips and gnawing on the lining of his mouth;
one, maybe two broadsides if we’re quick about it, and then we’re past each other, and swingin’ about t’re-engage. Once she’s past us, it might be best t’haul wind and wear alee, with the larboard battery ready for ’em that instant. The Spaniard will, too. It’d make no sense for them to turn up into the wind.

Lewrie used both forefingers to sketch out the manoeuvring on the wood of the cap-rails, supposing that the Spaniard would want to stay close enough for his further broadsides to be fired at a range of less than one hundred yards, giving his gunners surer chances of hits.

Christ, we’ll end up spirallin’ round each other like “country dancers”
, Lewrie thought;
but, I’ll have the pre-loaded larboard guns, and he’ll be re-loadin’ his starboard battery … and the Dons ain’t all that well drilled, in the main, at gunnery or ship-handlin’, both!

At least the Spanish were slower and clumsier back in Europe, he had to caution himself. With the Royal Navy’s incessant blockades of enemy harbours, it was rare for French, Dutch, or Spanish warships to get much sea time, or chances to practice live firing. This Spaniard, though, based out of the Argentine, or some other Spanish possession the other side of Cape Horn,
might
have been free to drill his crew to deadly competence.

He raised his telescope for yet another look at the approaching enemy warship, and made a decision.

“A point to windward, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered. “We are stupid, weak, and civilian … or so the Dons imagine. It’s only natural for us t’get to speakin’ distance and say hallo to another British ship, hey? I want us to pass starboard-to-starboard, damned close, so our first broadside’s a blow to the heart.”

“Aye, sir,” Lt. Westcott replied.

Might he haul his wind
before
then, cross our bows and rake us with his larboard guns
? Lewrie had to consider;
Or recognise us as a frigate, and decide t’bugger off South?

He shrugged that off, deeming that the Spaniard’s move could be spotted soon enough, and even at longer range, he still had time to turn up higher into the wind and present his larboard battery. Once the Spanish captain did that, he’d surrender the wind gage, and who in his right mind would give that advantage up, once seized?

Well, I have,
Lewrie confessed to himself with a wry grimace;
Hell’s Bells, I’m plannin’ on givin’ it up, this minute!

Another decision made; he would hold course.

“Mister Spendlove, my apologies to your gunners,” Lewrie called down to the weather deck and the waist, “but, I wish for roundshot to be drawn from the starboard great-guns, and replaced with chain, star, and bar shot, and double-loaded with grape canisters atop those. The twelve-pounder bow chaser, carronades, and quarterdeck nine-pounders will retain solid shot. We will pass close, and I want her rigging cut t’pieces, and her quarterdeck pummeled!”

“My, sir,” Lt. Westcott said in a whisper near his shoulder, “but how very un-British.”

“He’ll be expectin’ our usual ’twixt wind and water broadside, t’punch holes in his hull and dis-mount his guns,” Lewrie said with a wee snicker, “and, he may be plannin’ t’fire high and cripple us with his first broadside, but, I s’pose now and then we can emulate the customs of the French Navy, and his. And, there’s the biter, bit.”

“Deck, there!” a lookout sang out. “Chase is a …
frigate
!”

“Hull-up, sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton yelled, now standing on the starboard sail-tending gangway, having left his former perch on the shrouds.

Lewrie and Westcott could see the enemy as clear as day, by then, too, bows-on to
Reliant
with her entire hull in plain sight; not a now-and-then thing which depended upon the rise and scend from an active sea to shove her higher for a time. The seas were fairly calm with few cat’s paws, and any apparent waves no higher than one foot or so. The fully-risen early morning sun had brightened those waters to a brilliant dark blue, too, with no more sign of the muddy coloured outflow from the Plate River and its estuary.

Atop that brilliant blue sea, the Spanish frigate stood out starkly, a dark brown hull with a faint band of pale yellow paint, and her sails the colour of weathered parchment, Lewrie could take note after a long look with his telescope. The enemy looked a bit worse for wear, as if she had been at sea for months on end, which made him feel a touch of uneasiness that she might be that rare Spaniard who had had time to make herself hellishly efficient, and would be quicker off the mark than he had hoped, or expected.

Devil take it,
he grimly thought;
we’re committed.

He lowered his glass and looked aloft to the streaming commissioning pendant. “Another point to windward, Mister Westcott.”

“A point more to windward, aye, sir,” Westcott replied.

“Once our first broadside is delivered, we will haul our wind as quick as dammit, take the wind fine on the quarter, even wear if we have to, t’keep her in close gun-range. Be ready for it.”

“Aye, sir,” Westcott said, nodding and smiling. “Chomp down on her, and hang on like a bulldog.”

“That’s my good fellow!” Lewrie congratulated him.

He raised his glass once more to watch the enemy ship close the distance between them. She was altering her course slightly, hardening about one more point to windward, and baring a bit more to see of her starboard side.

Dogged, and implacable,
Lewrie thought.

“Spanish frigates, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie mused aloud. “How many guns do they mount? I can’t make a count of her ports, yet.”

“Uhm, anywhere from twenty-eight to fourty, I read somewhere, sir,” Westcott told him, after a long moment to dredge that information up. “We haven’t had much dealings with them, as we have had with the French. Anything from nine- to eighteen-pounders, or their equivalents. This one doesn’t appear all
that
large, so…,” he said with a shrug.

Lewrie judged the range to the Spaniard at about five miles or less, by then, and wondered just how much longer their enemy might be mis-led as to their nature, or whether the Spanish captain would stand on, thinking he would soon seize a British merchantman.

Surely, he
must
realise we’re a frigate,
sooner
or later!
he thought, worried that the Spaniard would haul off and begin to flee long before they came into decent gun-range, and all his preparations would be for nought.

Why,
why
do I trust to my cleverness!
Lewrie bemoaned;
Every time, I come a cropper! Clever,
me?
What
a sour joke
that
is!

“Last cast of the log?” Lewrie asked.

“Just under eight knots, sir,” Westcott reported.

“Let’s run up the main top-mast, middle, and main t’gallant stays’ls,” Lewrie ordered of a sudden. “Do we have to wheel round at short notice, we’ll need that extra canvas aloft.”

“Aye, sir,” Westcott said, raising his brass speaking-trumpet to bellow the order forward.

“Mister Simcock?” Lewrie called to the Marine officer, who was idly pacing the starboard sail-tending gangway behind his men posted at the bulwarks and hammock stanchions. “That Don yonder still thinks we’re a merchantman, so it’d be best were your Marines not visible to him ’til the last moment. Have ’em squat down, if you will.”

“
Squat,
sir?” Simcock asked, aghast.

“You, too, sir! Kneel, or hunch … or, as the Yankee Doodles say,
hunker
down, ’til we spring our surprise,” Lewrie ordered with a laugh. “Your men in the fighting tops should lie down out of sight, as well. I don’t wish your splendid red coats t’give ’em the squits!”

The gun crews and powder monkeys, who had been sitting or standing idle, and the portion of the crew assigned at Quarters to tend to the braces, sheets, and fighting tops and yards, had themselves a good, tension-relieving laugh at the “lobster back’s” expense.

“We’re closing rather fast, sir,” Lt. Westcott reported to him. “About three miles off now, she is. Both of us making the same rate of knots. The next ten minutes will tell.”

“I expect you’re right,” Lewrie said, nodding soberly. “He is either still gulled, or he’s recognised us for a frigate and doesn’t give a damn. Either way, it’s of no matter.”

He raised his telescope again to study the Spanish frigate, to try to count gun-ports down her starboard side. Closer to, she gave the impression that she
had
been at sea longer than most. That pale yellow hull stripe was bleached by sun and time to almost white, but her gun-ports were still closed, and the same outer colour as the hull stripe.

Lewrie crossed to the helm, and stowed his telescope away; it was no longer necessary. The Spaniard was close enough to trust his own eyes. He paced back to the weather side of the quarterdeck, and planted his feet, clasped his hands in the small of his back to seem stoic and confident, and waited.