Dewey Lambdin - H.M.S. COCKEREL
"Give us three points free, quartermaster. Steer east nor'east," Captain Braxton commanded, sounding grumpy and out-of-sorts. "Mister Braxton, signal to Windsor Castle : 'Enemy-In-Sight.'"
"Aye, aye, sir," the midshipman snapped, turning aft to the taffrails. A moment later, the proper signal flag soared aloft on a light halliard. With a jerk of the line, when it was "two-blocked" as high as it would go, the bunting bale burst open.
"Deck, there!" the lookout howled. "Tops'ls, now! Tops'ls' 'bove t' 'orizon, sir! FIVE chase, now, sir! Five chase!"
"We're overhauling 'em damn' fast," Lewrie exulted. He looked aloft. The signal flag was streaming at an odd angle, which made him frown. The westerlies which prevailed 'round Cape St. Vincent were at this latitude usually tending northerly, down where ships turned for the Caribbean. Today, though, they were perversely backing, blowing from west-nor'west, and it wasn't exactly the clearest day he'd ever seen, either. "Mister Braxton, any reply from the flag?" he inquired.
"Uhm, nossir," the midshipman replied, a digit up his nose.
"You can't tell from the deck, sir," Lewrie rasped. "Go aloft. They may not have seen it yet. Captain, sir?"
"What is it, Mister Lewrie?" Braxton grumbled impatiently.
"Signal flag's streaming, larboard quarter to starboard bows, sir. Might be unreadable yonder."
Captain Braxton rocked back on his heels, craning his neck to peer upwards over his shoulder. "Has the flagship replied?" he bade of the midshipman, now in the mizzen-top.
"No return signal, sir! They're barely in sight!"
"Damn," Braxton growled, scratching his unshaven chin. Cockerel was almost t'gallants-down over the horizon from the squadron, with the wind fluttering her alert towards the unidentified ships.
"Mister Lewrie, we'll put about. Lay her close-hauled on this larboard tack. We'll close the flagship, then spy out our visitors."
"Aye, aye, sir. Bosun!" he roared through his brass speaking trumpet. "Hands to the braces! Man for full-and-by!"
Lewrie had little charity for the captain; even so, he thought it professionally slovenly not to have alerted the squadron first off, before going to Quarters and turning eastward, even further downwind out of visual, and signalling, range.
Cockerel came trundling about, bows chopping on the lively sea, shrouds and lines beginning to moan to the apparent wind. Abeam the wind as she'd been sailing, it had not seemed so boisterous; but now spray dashed high as the bulwarks, and she heeled, hobby-horsing over long-set wavetops, loping into the wind something champion.
It took a quarter-hour on that exhilarating beat before they fetched high enough above the hazy horizon, before Windsor Castle rose tops'l high, and finally caught her urgent signal. Bunting soared up the flagship's masts, and sails foreshortened, as the squadron of tine-of-battle ships altered course eastward, to get in on whatever it was which the scouting frigate had found.
"Now, by God…" Braxton snapped. "Put about, Quartermaster. Make her course due east. Haul our wind, Mister Lewrie."
Back they flew towards the unidentified ships which were now well below the horizon, without the tiniest scrap of masthead trucks visible, guessing at where they might reappear.
"Buggered off to loo'rd once they spotted us," Lewrie opined with Mister Dimmock. "If they had a lick o' sense, o' course."
"Bound for Toulon or Marseilles, perhaps, sir," the sailing master agreed. "But… be they French East Indiamen, they'd hope to get in-shore, finish at that L'Orient of theirs, on the Bay of Biscay and-"
"Silence, both of you," Braxton barked. "Speculate off duty, not on. We've work to do. Or hadn't you noticed, sirs?"
"Of course, sir," they almost chorused.
"SAIL HO!" the lookout shrieked. "Four points off t'star-board bows! Five sail, same'z afore, there!"
"Running?" Braxton shouted back.
"Can't tell, sir!"
"Allow me to go aloft, sir," Lewrie bade, wriggling with curiosity. And to get away from Braxton for a few precious moments.
"Uhm… very well," the captain grudgingly allowed, giving him a grumpy once-over. Lewrie snatched his personal telescope from the binnacle-cabinet rack and dashed for the mizzen chains.
Up the ratlines on the windward side, where the ship's angle of heel made the ascent less steep, laying out on the futtock shrouds, then up and over the mizzen-top deadeyes onto the upper shrouds for the cross-trees, with Cockerel shrinking to a toothpick below him. A heaving, wallowing toothpick, and the mastheads swaying like treetops in a stiff wind.
They were almost hull-up to him, those unknown ships. Running downwind almost at Cockerel's point-of-sail, with the wind large on their larboard quarters. Big, dark, bulky three-masters, as impressive as 1st Rates. There were winks of cloudy sunshine on their wide sterns, on transom windows, gilt galleries and an acre of glass. But they were not warships. They looked like Compagnie des Indies ships, stiff with priceless Asian cargoes, and loaded so heavily they wallowed in the sea like cattle on a boggy moor. Cockerel had fetched them hull-up, almost in the time it had taken Lewrie to scale the mast! They could not outrun her. Slow and logy as the squadron's line-of-battle ships were to the west, even they would overhaul them within the hour.
"Seen their like before, Gittons?" he asked the mizzen lookout, lending him the heavy, shotgun-long telescope at full extension.
"Lor', sir! Indiamen, sure'z Fate. Too fancy t'be 1st Rates… e'en Frog 1st Rates," he cackled. "Be some prize-money comin' our way, by God, they'll be, Mister Lewrie. Whaww, though…"
"Where away?" Lewrie asked, knowing from Gittons' cautious tone there was trouble in gaining that fortune in prize-money.
"Almos' dead on th' bows, sir… 'at fifth sail? Abeam th' wind, almos' cocked up full-an'-by. Fifth Rate, I say, sir. Big frigate."
Lewrie retrieved his telescope and swung it to the left. There was a large ship there, at right angles to their course, one of the big forty-four-gunned 5th Rates the French were building, with eighteen- or twenty-four-pounders… the sort of frigate they might use to command a small overseas squadron. And she was already flying her national colours, the vertical stripes of blue-white-red of Republican France.
"Warship!" Lewrie bawled. "Deck, there! Frigate on our lee bow!"
He took hold of the standing backstay, slung the telescope on his shoulder, and half-slid, half-monkeyed his way back down, his legs clasped about the stay.
"A 5th Rate, sir?" Braxton demanded before bis feet hit the deck. "A warship, sir? What about the others?"
"Indiamen, sir. With one warship for escort. They're running almost free on a landsman's breeze," Lewrie explained, panting with his exertion and his excitement. "She's bearing almost north, close-hauled, to interpose. She'll cross our bows in a few minutes, sir."
Braxton tucked his hands behind his back and paced the windward side of the quarterdeck, a naval captain's inviolate sanctuary when he was on deck. Lewrie noted that Braxton's blunt fingers were twining and fretting.
"And the squadron, Mister Lewrie?" he grimaced, turning to look inboard to his officers.
"Uhm… coming up astern, sir. I didn't…" He flushed.
Petulance twisted Braxton's mouth; it looked like he had muttered/oo/! "Aloft, there! What of the squadron?"
"Courses 'bove t'horizon, sir!" the lookout shouted back. "Be line-abreast, starboard quarter, off t'wind, sir!"
God, one could espy their tops'Is from the deck, Lewrie thought! There they were, stretched out, bows-on to Cockerel, arrayed like beads on a string, a little sou'west of her stern. Were there to be a fight, they could bear off, or bear up to windward, and form line-of-battle. Or dash on, if Vice-Admiral Cosby ordered general chase, and run those Frog merchantmen to ground, one at a time.
"Mister Lewrie," Captain Braxton decided, snapping his fingers to summon him to the windward side. "We'll harden up, close-hauled."
"Same course as yon forty-four, sir," Lewrie nodded in understanding. "Trading shots with her, though, sir… eighteen-pounders…"
"Are you a coward, as well as a fool, sir?" Braxton blustered.
"Sir, I am not!" Lewrie shot back. "I'm as ready as you, when it comes to fighting this ship. I wished to ask if you wanted to overhaul in her best gun range, sir, or lask down to her on a bow-and-quarter-line. Allow me to suggest we lask, sir, then haul our wind, cross her stern and rake her… sir."
Call me any kind of fool, or sham, he thought; but you never call me a coward, you bastard. Now you go too bloody far!
As if sensing that he had gone too far, Braxton stifled a belch-like flood of outrage which rose in his chest, and turned away.
"Close-hauled, aye, aye, sir," Lewrie parroted, going amidships. "Bosun, hands to the braces! Hard-sheets! Lay her full-and-by!"
He could see the French frigate from the deck by then, long and sleek, like a cut-down line-of-battle ship, a touch of poop, a bit of forecastle, with her courses well up over the horizon. She swung from dead on their bows to the starboard side, just forward of abeam as Cockerel turned nor'east They would slowly overhaul, and head-reach her on this course, though a couple of miles out of gunnery range. Or their own. Alan expected her to haul her wind any moment. Surely the French lookouts could see the squadron's threatening tops'ls by then.
What a bloody wasted effort, Lewrie thought, his senses acute and calculating. He felt they should be hauling their wind, going for the Frog 5th Rate like a terrier, then nipping past her stern at close range. Give her a well-timed broadside, then dash on past to get at the merchantmen. Every ship in sight would share in the prize-money if one or all of them were taken. But Cockerel was the only frigate present-the rest were too far to the south, or far to the north of the squadron. Their misfortune, he smirked! Out of sight, out of the running. And that was what frigates were for.
Cockerel barreled on, surging and slashing at the uncooperative sea, slowly head-reaching until the French warship was just a bit aft of abeam. They could turn now, go tearing down on her, and still pass within half a cable of her stern, if she held her course and did not shorten sail. Lewrie began to pat his foot in anxiety.
"Excuse me, sir," he asked, going back to windward to join his captain. "Should we not allow her four-points-free, so we may fall to loo'rd, onto her, sir?"
"It is my decision, sir. Now be still!" Braxton hissed, wheeling on him. "The squadron, sir, will daunt them. She'll haul wind, she can't trade fire with the liners. Attend to your duties, sir."
"Sir, should she haul her wind, there's still the Indiamen-"
"I gave you an order, Mister Lewrie!"
"Aye, aye, sir."
"There, d'ye see, hah?" Braxton hooted with scorn suddenly. "She's falling off, at last. Turning to run! Now, Mister Lewrie… now you may haul our wind. Gybe, and steer sou'east."
