“Oh, no, sir, I beg your pardon. You’re quite correct, I’m sure, but laying a long gun’s hardly the same as plotting a course on a dismal old chart. And as for that big lovely carronade, oh! You haven’t let me touch her yet, you haven’t let me fire her at all, but if you would—!”
“I’ll see that you supervise the firing of it next time, Mr. Peebles.” I wondered if I’d just been blackmailed. “I noticed you’d took a shine to our armament, but I hadn’t appreciated the depth of your interest. I guess it won’t hurt anybody if you was our gunnery officer.” And especially it wouldn’t hurt anybody if Horne didn’t have to pretend to defer to the boy, and the boy didn’t write to his father the congressman to tell him I’d put a black man over him. “Now, get on back to your hammock. I’ll need all your attention when we fire off that carronade tomorrow in the afternoon watch.”
You pompous ass, I laughed at myself as I went topside to let the breeze into my shirt and trousers; a captain should speak in monosyllables, not blabber away like a pedagogue.
“Mr. Horne,” I said, examining the traverse board in the light of the binnacle. “Take a star sighting for me, please. I need to know our exact position. You’ll find the celestial tables and Maskelayne’s almanac in the chartroom.”
I went forward while Horne fussed with the sextant. The sky shone like a jar full of lightning bugs, yet it was powerful dark out; the moon had been in the last quarter two days ago, and would be a new moon in, let’s see, six days. Make it Thursday. Birds Island lay about two hundred and sixty-five nautical miles to the south-southeast, which gave us plenty of time to get there, barring accidents and hidden disasters. I knocked on the rail to hold disaster at bay, and then clasped my hands behind my back when I realized what I was doing. Every time I turned around I was knocking on wood.
Horne called out, “Going below, sir.”
“Who’s at the conn?”
“Gundy’s come up from below, sir.”
“Very well.”
I went and fetched the binnacle sextant and shot Formalhaut, a hand’s-breadth high in the southeast, and Arcturus in Boötes, an hour from setting at west by north, and then joined Horne in the chartroom.
He glanced up from a scrap of paper he’d covered with figures. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. He held his back as upright as the low deckbeams would allow, and his brow and upper lip were sweaty. “I just can’t seem to make it come out right.”
The man was embarrassed. It wouldn’t do to patronize him, but I had to be able to rely on him. Privately I was as happy as a clam at high tide that he’d gotten this far.
I looked up Formalhaut and Arcturus in the almanac and then glanced at his scribbles and cross-outs. “Did you allow for the magnetic variation?”
“No, sir.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, cleared his throat and began again. “Here you are, sir.”
I compared his new result with my own and drew it out on the chart. “That’s well. We’ll clear Carvel Rock with room to spare. The western Carvel Rock, not the eastern one.” There was another Carvel Rock over in the British line of cays and scrubby humps that stretched eastward from Saint John in the Virgin Islands. “Lay our course, then all hands to make sail.”
It wasn’t darkness that had prevented me from heading down the West Channel earlier, but indecision. If I couldn’t turn up any sign of Peter at Birds Island, I’d look foolisher than an old man at a kissing bee. It’s a rare commander whose crew don’t think he’s a fool, but I had to do something.
Little Passage Island slipped by to larboard, a looming presence that I felt more than saw. No, that wasn’t quite right, I thought, smiling in the dark. I could smell the land, and I could hear the ocean thrusting past it. The wind blew light and steady from the northeast, easing Tomahawk at a constant three knots down the channel.
At four o’clock the watch changed, and I stood at the windward rail, taking comfort in the matter-of-factness with which the blurred shapes of the men went to their stations. There was no moon or planets abroad, and without them the sky seemed as featureless as a face without lashes or brows, but by the stars in the sky and their reflections on the water I could see for some distance: low shrubby islands all around, Mount Sage on Tortola clipping off a segment of starry sky to the east, and under the keel an eerie green phosphorescence shooting through the sea as a pack of barracudas tore apart a drift of squid. Someone on the fo’c’s’le laughed, followed by a voice that seemed to say, “Hewdie hewdie hewdie,” and then more laughter. Erne Eriksson was amusing his mates by saying things in Swedish. The great pale band of the Milky Way stretched overhead. I breathed in slowly, steadily, deeply, like I could inhale the whole world into my chest.
“Ease up on the sheets,” I said. The cheer would not last if I piled up on something in the dark.
A while later Gundy coughed discreetly. “Wind’s backing against the sun, zur.”
He meant it was going widdershins, veering around counterclockwise, but the words were strange to hear at night. It was coming up gusty and pulling clouds in with it, too: low, loomy piles of them that blurred the horizon and blotted out the stars.
“Very well. All hands to shorten sail.” The cry ran along the deck, and then rigging creaked and the hull vibrated as the men scampered along to their stations. “Mr. Horne, get a man for’ard with the lead, if you please.”
And then the rain came in blinding bursts that filled the air like drownding. We rode it out under a double-reefed maincourse and a prayer we weren’t whirling away alee, and then the rain dropped off to a nagging drizzle and the wind fell away to a light air from the northeast; not the true trades, but steady and reassuring as a handrail on a darkened stair. The ceiling remained low and the air stayed wet, but a band around the horizon glimmered and twinkled, and a faint streak of false dawn grew in the east.
“Excuse me, sir,” said O’Lynn, doffing his sodden hat as he stepped onto the quarterdeck. “But ’tis a light I think I’ve seen.”
“That’s just the zodiacal light. It’s the atmosphere of the sun.”
“Oh, no, beggin’ your honor’s pardon, sir, but ’tis a true light from a lantern.”
I hadn’t thought I could be any more awake, but of a sudden I was. “Where away?”
“A point off the la’board bow, sir.”
I took the brass and mahogany night glass out of its leather case and peered forward. A tiny smear of light shone from beyond the larboard cathead, sure enough, diffused by the rain but plain to see now that I knew to look for it.
“Mr. Horne, send the lookouts aloft, if you please, and let the soundings be passed from man to man instead of sung out.”
“Aye aye, sir.” He went forward to give his orders quietly.
The leadsman sang, “By the mark—” before Horne had a chance to get to him, and then left off in mid-chant. A man touched his hat to me before swarming up the windward shrouds. Gundy turned the glass in the binnacle and started forward to strike the bell.
“Belay that till further orders,” I said. I checked the traverse board. “Let her fall off a little.”
“Let her fall off a little, aye aye, zur,” he murmured, echoed by the man at the tiller.
Not too far, now, I thought as her head came a little to leeward—I couldn’t see the shoal of coral heads that I knew lay in wait there, but I could just about feel it in my gut.
“That’s very well thus,” I said. “Brace up. That’s well your braces. Quietly, now.” The Tomahawk’s little quarterdeck was already too crowded, but something was missing. “Did anybody rouse out Peebles?”
He popped his head out from around the other side of the mainmast. “Here I am, sir.”
“Good. Clear away your guns.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “Aye aye, sir!”
“Quietly.” No need for more words than that. I’d have plenty of time to strangle him later.
Not seeing for myself was more than I could bear, and I took the night glass up to th
e fore crosstrees. The lookout silently pointed at a faint patch to windward.
A ship lay there, all right, a long, sleek ghost in the gloom. She was an inverted ghost, as a lens to correct for that would also lessen the light in the glass, and she seemed to be wearing topgallants. Topgallants at night made her a man-of-war, probably, and the loft of her masts compared with the lowness of her hull made her a frigate, more than likely. Behind me, Tomahawk’s long commission pendant flopped soggily at the main. What breeze there was—two, three knots maybe—was just enough to give us steerageway.
I tapped the lookout on the arm. “Go alow and tell Gundy to come a point to sta’board, then come back here.”
Gundy had more sense than to reply, but the swaying of my perch changed as Tomahawk altered course. We’d be past the coral heads by now, but Carvel Rock lurked somewhere to starboard. I ducked my head to peer between the forecourse and topsail, and saw it looming; or, more accurately, I heard a difference in the sound the sea made as it lapped against its steep sides. I’d have to come about soon. That would take us toward the unidentified ship. The schooner’s advantage, being able to sail closer to the wind than a square-rigger, was unavailable to me; my only choice was to slip across the ship’s stern and hope that when morning busted out on our heads we’d be in the shallows on the other side of the channel, where no frigate could follow us. And I’d want to be at least a mile away—farther, if she carried anything larger than twelve-pounders.
I squinted through my glass at the ship’s mastheads, dark against the first gray hint of the rising sun. She looked more French than English, but there was something comforting about her appearance. The rain was lifting and the rising wind continued to back. I would need speed soon, not stealth.
“Come four points to la’board,” I hissed. The command ran softly down to the quarterdeck, relayed in a whisper from man to man.
The stranger altered course as well, bearing up and heading north, and I guess I wasn’t the only Tomahawk who sighed with relief. We’d cross the ship’s wake with room and to spare. Once we’d cleared the channel, we could fly northeast and scrape off any pursuer by darting in among the cays.
The clouds began to break up. Tomahawk passed nakedly into a patch of sea bare of rain, and I squinted as a shaft of rising sun caught us. The bare patch was wide enough to include the ship: a frigate for sure, and at quarters, of course, as any man-o’-war would be at first light; and the sight of her run-out guns and the man at her masthead pointing at us caused my scalp to crawl. I was about to holler down at Gundy to come about and damn the paint, but something in the back of my mind made me look at her again. Then a gust billowed out the red and white stripes of her commission pendant, and I recognized her.
“Ahoy the Choptank!” I called.
“Well, well, well, Mr. Graves,” said Captain Oxford, pumping my hand in the broad, many-windowed after-cabin of the Choptank. She was only a 28—that was her rating, anyway; she carried twenty-four 12-pounders on her maindeck and eight 9-pounders on her quarterdeck and fo’c’s’le, same as her sister ship, the General Greene— but the Choptank was not new-built and had some comfort in her. I returned Oxford’s handshake firmly, though I didn’t like touching the hand that had signed the death warrant of François Villon Deloges. A pirate Villon had been, caught with blood on his hands and my watch in his pocket, but he’d saved my life once, which was more than I’d done for him. “Lieutenant Graves,” Oxford added, reaching out to tap me on the epaulet. “Let’s wet the swab, shall we?”
I looked him in the eye. Peter was wanted dead, I knew, and I knew that it would be hushed up afterward, and I’d be a private embarrassment to the gentlemen of the navy, an irritating reminder of a fellow officer’s indiscretion. Peter was a plague sore, a festering bubo, which as soon as I lanced it would cover me with its contagion. My brother officers would despise me like a bloody-handed surgeon in a parlorful of physicians. But I’d have my epaulet and Gaswell’s backing, and they could all go hang. It was that or go home. I needed to keep my head clear.
“That’s good of you, sir, thank’ee. But I’ll just take coffee.”
He looked at me oddly, like I’d said something beyond his ken, but then he said, “Nonsense! It’s wine you want on this beautiful morning. The rain has lifted, and the sky stands as clear as thought.”
“Really, sir—”
He cut me off with a shout. “Steward, there! Break out a couple of bottles of the yellow label, and pass the word for Mr. Brownstone and anyone else who’s off duty!” He muttered a few more well-well-wells and looked at me sternly, like he was going to give me some advice that he didn’t want to give me any more’n I wanted to hear it.
I held my head high, though it took all my strength. I knew what he was going to say—not the exact words, maybe, but the thrust of it—and he could stow his gob, as far as I was concerned. I would do Commodore Gaswell’s filthy work, but bugger me sideways if I’d have an audience. Even Tom Turdman got privacy when he cleaned out a shit-hole.
Then there came a knock at the door, and Brownstone, the first lieutenant, stuck his head in.
“Come in, Tommy,” said Oxford. “Come in, and see who I have here!”
Brownstone drifted in, brown-eyed, handsome, and looking at me like he was a happy bachelor and I was someone’s doughy daughter being pushed on him. At his heels came Halliwell, who was the second lieutenant, and Mr. Smiley, a lanky, redheaded midshipman. They all of them looked so much the same as last I’d seen them—when Billy and Peter and I were dining in her and the Harold had brought word to Billy to surrender his command—that I might’ve just stepped out for five months and come back an instant after I’d left.
“Mr. Graves, what joy,” said Brownstone, without joy. “I saw you come aboard. So, you’ve made lieutenant. We’ll see what comes of it.”
Halliwell offered a chubby hand and cheerful delight that was as pleasant as it was honest. Smiley, who’d been a peer to me last time I’d seen him, smiled at me with an odd mix of deference and envy.
“She’s a fine little thing,” said Oxford, gazing out the stern windows at Tomahawk. “Fast enough to windward, I bet, ain’t she?”
I didn’t guess he was being anything more than polite—I was acutely aware of her shabby paint, and the stains along her scuppers, and a long splice in a main topsail clewline that weren’t Horne’s best work ever—but I felt a surge of pride anyway.
“We made over nine knots for a watch and a half on the way down from Hampton Roads.” I smiled despite my caution. “And my quartermaster swears she topped eleven knots once. I own it’s hard to swallow,” I said when they looked doubtful. “Her hull ain’t long enough to crack along like that, I guess. But she’s fast to windward, as you say, sir.”
The steward had been opening a bottle of Madeira as I spoke, and when he handed me a glass I took it without thinking.
“Old, isn’t she?” said Brownstone.
“Yes,” I said, “about your age, I think.”
He let that one go. “And is that a traverse-mounted gun amidships?”
“Yes, a twelve-pounder carronade.”
“And how does that serve you?” He looked at me sideways, first one way and then the other, like a lizard hunting flies.
“I rig a hose to the pump to use as a fire engine. I wet the sails and pray the good Lord willing the flaming wads don’t set our canvas afire.” I grinned at Halliwell and made him laugh. “Other than that, it’s a fine piece of ordnance.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” said Oxford, like he’d just come back from far away and hadn’t heard the beginning of the conversation. He pulled his whiskers and drank off his Madeira, and muttered, “Well, well, well” again.
The four of them exchanged glances. Oxford coughed into his fist. Then, “Say, I figured you might pass through here. The commodore—how’s that wine, by the by?”
“It’s a good bottle, sir. No, no more—well, thank you, sir. The commodore . . . ?”
> “Yes. Well. That is . . . The commodore asked me to cruise these grounds in hopes of intercepting you.” He shook his head. “Those Danes. Uppity fellows. Keep asking me what I’m doing here, and I keep telling ’em it’s none of their never-you-mind, but they persist.”
I was getting a cold feeling up my backside, the way he was skipping around without engaging his subject. But he was a post-captain and he’d spill it when he was ready.
He looked again out the stern windows. “Ugly business you’re engaged in. No offence, Mr. Graves—far from it. I admire a man who can do a dirty job and keep his hands clean. Oh, damme, that’s not what I meant to say at all. Look at me,” he said, swabbing his chin with his handkerchief. “I’m all flummoxed. Now, see here, Mr. Graves, I’m trying to soften the blow, but I have to admit I’m doing a damned poor job of it, pardon my French. But easing up on a blow that must be delivered only makes it hurt the worse when it finally is delivered. Do you know what I mean?”
My head had sunk. I lifted it. “That a certain lieutenant truly is dead, sir?”
He choked on his wine. “Oh, good God, no. Him!” He hauled out his handkerchief again and dabbed at his chin with it; Brownstone took it from him and mopped his cravat for him. “Not yet he isn’t, the son of a you-know-what. There are some things we dasn’t discuss, but if you was to come across a certain ‘Captain Mèche’ and bring him to me I’d be beholden to you, as I’d like to put the noose around his neck myself.” In his agitation, he stuffed his wet handkerchief back up his sleeve. “No, sir, no, it’s bad news I have for you. Mr. Towson of the Insurgent was a friend of yours, I take it?”
“Was is right, sir.”
“Oh, you’ve already heard, have you?”
“Heard what, sir?” My heart commenced to thumping, his face was so long.
He tugged on his side-whiskers. He was going to snatch himself bald if he kept that up. “Why, that he’s been lost.”
“Taken prisoner, sir?” I didn’t guess jail would do Dick much harm, and probably some good. I’d heard the one in Guadeloupe wasn’t so bad. It sure couldn’t hold a candle to the one Juge and I had been in last spring in Jacmel. “Well, the French’ll return the officers soon enough. They always do, sir.”
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