Jester's Fortune

by Dewey Lambdin

  “We’ll stand on a bit more, ’fore . . .” Lewrie mused, turning for another peek at what Mlavic was doing. Which, he imagined, might involve tearing his hair out in frustration at the moment. His dhow had worked her way back windward of Jester, out on her larboard quarter again. And no more than a mile astern, down to leeward. Edging out to pass, but he’d be just a bit too late. Depending on what the brig did, of course. Then Lewrie turned to peer forward once more.

  “Three-quarter mile,” Buchanon speculated, sounding excited. “Ah!”

  “Uhum!” Lewrie beamed. The brig was turning, bearing more Westerly and bracing her yards round, hauling taut as she swung in a wide arc to put herself on the wind on the same tack as Jester! Nowhere near as fast, she planned to match courses and let Jester —a “fellow countryman”—surge up to her so their firepower was concentrated. Should he speak her, captain-to-captain, and plan what they could do to “save” themselves?

  “Pinch us up, quartermasters. Luff up, and nothing to loo’rd.” Lewrie snapped. “Mister Crewe, ready with the starboard battery!”

  The wheel-drum groaned as Spenser and Brauer fought it for two or three more spokes of lee helm to take their ship up to the very edge of the winds, clawing out another fifty yards of advantage. Then they backed off only one or two spokes, at most, as the fickle wind shifted, eyes on the luff of the main-course and main-tops’l, the flutterings of the commissioning pendant high aloft as it streamed like a weathervane to steer by . . . the compass bedamned, from there on out. They cursed softly as they put their weight on it, judging by feel of the tiller-ropes’ tension and the wind on their cheeks if they were coasting too close toward luffing; scanning the sea off the lar-board bows for a contrary skeining of rivulets on the wavetops, or a glass-smooth patch of calm.

  “Over, now, ye square-head!” Spenser grunted. “Oh, ye lady, oh, ye sweet’un! ’At’s our darlin’ lass!”

  “Rasmus!” Brauer hissed as he fed from the lee side to Spenser on the windward. “Ach, ja! Lir . . . bitte!”

  Christ, e’en the Germans’re believers now! Lewrie grumbled to himself. Callin’ on his old sea-god . . . and ours!

  The brig was most nicely cooperating. As she rounded up, wearing close-hauled to the Sou’west, she lost ground to leeward and spent all her windward placement. Suddenly she was within a quarter mile off the starboard bows and nearly a cable to the right of Jester’s course.

  Should he charge up her larboard side? Lewrie smiled. They were not two hundred yards off! Mlavic? Hah! Stupid shit.

  The brig’s manoeuvre had thrown Mlavic off. Jester would reach her first and be between him and the prize. With a happily imagined eruption of head-fur as Mlavic tore his hair out, the dhow was hauling her wind and falling off to cross Jester’s stern. If Mlavic couldn’t catch her by passing left, he’d duck down and pass right, and assault the brig’s leeward side. But that’d put him in the wind-shadow of Jester’s tall masts and massive spread of sail, and rob him of the wind-strength he needed to hold his course or make his current speed, making his attack even later!

  “Might be uncanny knacky t’keep finding us, Mr. Buchanon,” Lewrie noted. “But he’s not a clever sailor, is he?”

  “What need have we o’ such a ‘no-sailor,’ ’en, Cap’um?”

  “Only God above—and Captain Charlton—knows, sir,” Lewrie replied. “Mister Knolles? Ready to get our way off. Once we’ve fired her a cheery hello, be ready to fetch-to and get boats down.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  “Mister Hyde, still with us?” Lewrie asked, craning about.

  “Here, sir,” the midshipman replied, stepping forward.

  “Strike the French flag and hoist the proper colours,” Lewrie said, pacing to the forward edge of the quarterdeck. “Mister Crewe? Warning shot, once we’ve our own colours aloft. Does she haul away, though, do you serve her a full broadside!”

  And there the brig lay, just a bit ahead of abeam, within a long musket-shot, thrashing away to windward and safety frantically, with her captain and first mate by her windward rails with speaking-trumpets in their hands. Crewmen were waving tarred hats or long, red Frog stocking caps, giving their “ally,” their “rescuer,” a hearty Gallic cheer.

  “’Alloo!” the brig’s captain shrilled. “Bon matin, m’sieur!”

  “Colour’s aloft, sir!” Midshipman Hyde yelled from astern.

  “Open the gun-ports and run out, Mister Crewe! Warnin’ shot!”

  With a deep thunderous growl of wooden truck wheels on oak decks, the guns of the starboard battery were hauled up to the ports, the same time as the port lids were swung up and out of the way, interrupting the pacific dark-green gunwale stripe with a chequer of blood-red interior bulwark paint as they hinged flat against Jester’s side.

  The starboard foc’s’le carronade erupted with a titanic belch of smoke and flame, placing an 18-pounder solid iron ball in the sea just fifty feet ahead of the brig’s beak-head rails and figurehead, splashing a great pillar of spray as high as her fore-course yard, which sheeted on her foredecks as she sailed into it like a sudden summer sun-shower.

  “And a bloody good morning t’you as well, m’sieur!” Lewrie cried across. It was difficult to shout, though; he was laughing too hard at the looks of utter disbelief on the Frenchmen’s phyzes! “Amenez-vous? Do you strike? Or do I blow you t’Hades?” he demanded, patting the cold iron barrel of the nearest quarterdeck carronade.

  The brig’s captain was stamping his feet and raging in a circle about his deck, like he was trying to kill an entire plague of roaches. He flung his speaking-trumpet at Jester —almost reached her, he was so exercised! But, after a final fist-shake and tearing off his hat—to do a furious stomping on that, too!—he howled at his after-guard.

  And her Tricolour came sagging down.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Lie!” Dragan Mlavic accused, once he’d attained the gang-ways on the prize. “Cheat! British, you cheat and lie! Take for self!”

  “Sir,” Lewrie countered, icily civil, “you were too far down to leeward. Understand . . . leeward? Too far off. You almost cost us the . . . our prize, by tacking too soon. Gave the game away.”

  “So now you keep?” Mlavic raged, flexing knobby rough fingers about the hilt of his expensive scimitar. He’d been followed by three of his larger and most rakehellish accomplices, who couldn’t follow a bloody word that was said, of course, but were willing to back Mlavic to the hilt against strangers.

  “On the contrary . . . sir,” Lewrie replied, grinding his teeth to remain calm. It wasn’t every day an English gentleman was told he was a liar or a cheat; those were dueling words, gentleman-to-gentleman, a cause for blood! “You are entitled to a share of her goods, just as we agreed back at Mjlet with your leader.”

  And however do ye really pronounce that? Alan wondered.

  “And I’ll thankee t’take your hand off your sword hilt, before I get angry. Sir,” Lewrie dared snap.

  “’Fore some’un gets bad hurt fo’ insultin’ ou’ cap’um, heah me?” Andrews spoke up from Lewrie’s right rear, with his right hand firm on the hilt of his slung cutlass. “Ya un’erstan’ ‘hurt,’ mon?” Andrews threatened, backed up by Midshipman Spendlove and five hands off Lewrie’s gig. “Be easy, now.”

  Mlavic squinted his beady little eyes, screwing his face up like he’d caught a whiff of something rotten. For a second or two, he tried to puff out his chest like a pigeon, but thought better of it. Andrews was something out of his experience, a West Indies black seaman, sprung up like a vengeful djinn in Turkish tales, and as fearsome as an ogre. Wearing a coxswain’s pipe, pistol and sword, and backed by other hands spoiling for a fight. With a raspy sigh, he deflated, cowed.

  “Aye, let’s be easy. A misunderstanding,” Lewrie allowed.

  There was a vituperative, gargling diatribe in Serbo-Croat fired at Mlavic’s backers. Sounded damn vituperative, anyway, Alan thought. But Mlavic let go the hilt of his scimitar, to cross his arms o
ver his chest, and his escorts ostentatiously made their own hands go someplace inoffensive and unthreatening, rather self-consciously.

  “That’s better,” Lewrie said. “Stand easy, Andrews. Lads.”

  “Want guns,” Dragan Mlavic grumbled, sounding much abashed but still pigheaded determined to get his fair due. “Guns, shot, powder.”

  The brig mounted some small 2-pounder boat-guns for stern or bow-chasers, and no more than six 6-pounder carriage guns. All were rather rusty and badly cared for, the carriages looking as dry and fragile as abandoned barn planking. The ready-use shot in the rope garlands near the guns appeared welded together by a reddish oxide scale. Lewrie had no use for them, and if Mlavic could clean them up, paint and oil, file and sand them back into a semblance of proper maintenance, then he was more than welcome to them.

  “They are yours, captain Mlavic,” Lewrie grandly offered. “As we agreed. Courtesy of the Royal Navy.”

  The thick-set pirate beamed at that news, turned to his sailors and told them of their bounty, which made them smile at last, and made Mlavic preen like a man just presented with a spanking-new silk coat.

  “Anything else you wish, sir?” Lewrie said, trying to mollify the man further. “I have her papers, here, and her manifest. She carries wine, cheese, flour, pasta, brandies, various manufactured goods . . . understand ‘manifest’?”

  “Manifest, da.” Mlavic nodded vigourously. “This I knowing. I see?” He peered at the offered lists Lewrie held out to him, head over to one side and running a tar-stained finger down the top one. Breathing hard.

  Can he read a manifest in French? Lewrie wondered. Or can this oak stump read at all? He pointed to an entry— Trousers: 12 Bundles, Used/Mended.

  “Any use for this, sir?” Lewrie queried, tongue-in-cheek. “Quite a tasty assortment for you and your men. Various flavoured brandies.”

  “Brandy, da.” Mlavic nodded again, eyes almost crossing with the intensity of his pondering, but glowing piggishly delighted. “Captain brandy? Or, ratafia . . . serve crew? No good, ratafia, pooh!” he spat.

  No, he can’t read it! Lewrie exulted. Got you!

  “Why don’t you just tick off what you wish, hmm?” he offered, feeling sly-boots. “Then boat your choices over to your ship, hey?”

  Now worm yer way out o’ that’un, ya poxy clown! Lewrie thought.

  “What you want?” Mlavic countered with a suspicious glint in his eyes. “You pick. Send, your ship. We take rest, da?”

  Baited me right back, by God, thought Lewrie, still smiling as if he didn’t wish to strangle the hairy bastard that instant.

  The winds hadn’t picked up considerably, but the seas still long-rolled over seven to eight feet, and Jester, the captured brig and the dhow were pitching, rolling and slatting in a continual clatter as they lay fetched-to. To manhandle cargo up from the holds onto the deck and then down into ship’s boats would be pluperfect buggery. Only the very smallest or lightest items could make the journey without getting hands injured or drowned; not much beyond what people could carry in a canvas sea-bag of plunder, and not much beyond a couple of hundredweight into each boat at a time, making the transfer an entire day’s drudgery, and a danger-fraught steeplechase for crewmen in wildly tossing boats.

  Mr. Giles and his Jack-in-the-Breadroom were standing by, nigh salivating over the goodies the brig held. He could replenish Jester to a fair approximation of Royal Navy standard rations with the stored flour, rice, dried beans and salt-meats. They might be short of issue rum by then, but the brig’s vin ordinaire would more than suffice, and the best part of the situation was that whatever he could transship to Jester was absolutely scot-free, taken from a prize for nothing, instead of having to cough up his personal funds, or Navy Board funds, for them. The purser would still charge for their issue, though, making his five percent. He already had several small crates or chests laid out, Lewrie saw. Tobacco twists for those who chewed, snuff for those that preferred it that way and loose shag tobacco for the smokers. Twelve percent profit on that, along with his slop-goods. Lewrie thought Giles might even desire one of those bundles of Trousers, Used/Mended!

  “There are some few things we could use, Captain Mlavic.” Alan shrugged. “To allow Jester to keep the seas.”

  “Good. You take. We keep ship,” Mlavic announced. “What?”

  “Promise ship. Here is ship,” Mlavic pointed out.

  “But Captain Rodgers was to capture a ship for you. For Captain Petracic, rather,” Alan objected. “Surely he’s done that by now.”

  “Ship, Ratko, da,” Mlavic sniggered, doggedly insistent. “Want ship, Dragan. My ship.”

  “You have a ship there,” Lewrie said, pointing at the dhow.

  “Want ship.” Mlavic frowned. “This ship. More men come, sail both.”

  “Don’t have more men now,” Lewrie countered. “Too few to man this ship and yours at same time. French crew, you’ll have to guard.”

  Damme, now he’s got me jabberin’ pidgin! Lewrie fretted; all that lovely wine aboard, and damned if I ain’t short!

  “I take ship,” Mlavic announced, like a petulant child. Lewrie thought he was ready to stick out his lower lip or hold his breath ’til he turned blue!

  “And can you handle a brig, sir?” Lewrie quibbled. “It’s not like your lateener, not—”

  “When boy, go to sea,” Mlavic shot back, nettled that his professional skills were being questioned. “Go Ragusa, work Venetian ship. Go Corfu, work Naples’ ship. Go Malta, work Maltese ship. Go Genoa . . . work ship, bilander, poleacre, brig . . . all same. Work Trieste, Venice, Cádiz, Lisbon, all over. Topman, helm, bosun mate . . . even work Zante . . . British traders come for currants, da? Go Pool of London, once. Hand, reef and steer, da? Handle brig, da! You give brig. Take some cargo. We keep rest.”

  Christ, next he’ll say he was Able Seaman, R.N.! Alan sighed.

  “You have, what . . . forty hands?”

  “Half for dhow, half for brig.”

  “Mind, you’ll have to guard the French prisoners, too.”

  “No, you take.”

  “Captain Mlavic, I can’t.” Lewrie sighed again. “Lookee here, sir. The agreement was for us to operate separately. Secretly. Now, do I turn up at Trieste with French prisoners, the word gets out that I took her and turned her over to you, d’ye see? If she’s your prize, then I’m afraid you’re stuck with ’em. You’ll have to take ’em back to Palagruza and dump ’em in that prison stockade your Captain Petracic was to build.”

  “No,” Mlavic pouted.

  “’Fraid you’ll have to. Can’t continue your cruise with a brig and a dhow both half-manned,” Lewrie pointed out. “All of ’em, mind. In good health,” he added, wondering if Mlavic was not above killing them and dumping the bodies over the side like “blackbirders” did with sickly slaves. “I have a list of their names, and, as we agreed, I’ll pay you an English shilling a head, right now, for their well-being. You’ll be able to feed ’em with the stores aboard.”

  Lewrie snuck a glance at the small knot of French prisoners by the foremast. Government-hired by the French or a speculative voyage, even the French shipmasters were averse to hiring on any more hands than was absolutely necessary. There were only nineteen men, including the cook and the snot-nosed cabin servants, aboard her.

  “Now, we’ll put in somewhere, find a calm lee behind some island and transfer some supplies to Jester, sir,” Lewrie pressed. “But if you want this brig, then you’ll have to take them, into the bargain.”

  Then sail back to Palagruza and outa my hair, please Jesus? he thought hopefully, eager to be shot of the bastard.

  “Take brig, da,” Mlavic grunted, broken-hearted, piggish. “Take prisoners, da. No hurt them, da. I agree.”

  “Good, then,” Lewrie breathed out, quite pleased of a sudden.

  “Go now, Palagruza.” Mlavic beamed. “Srpski narod, poor. Have nothing, year and year. British, rich navy, have much. Dragan, he take all. Now,” Mlavic
said, looking as if he were ready to start weeping over the plight of his people all over again.

  Well, if that’s what it takes to make him go, then fine! Lewrie silently mused; and may he have joy of it! God, ’fore he blubbers up!

  “Very well, sir,” Lewrie relented, doffing his hat and forcing himself to look “shit-eatin’” pleasant. “She’s yours. Good hunting—”

  “Nineteen shilling,” Mlavic interrupted, hand out like a Mother Abbess in a knocking-shop. “Nineteen prisoner, I hear say. I knowing. Nineteen shilling. Knowing shilling, too.”

  And Lewrie was forced to dig into his breeches pockets and rummage about for coins. With no need of purse or money at sea, all that could be found was a single stray golden guinea.

  “Ah!” Mlavic exclaimed as it appeared. “I owe you two shilling. Good luck, gold guinea.”

  His hand was out again, and Lewrie was forced to plop the coin on Mlavic’s callused paw.

  “Ahem, well,” Lewrie said, flummoxed. “Mister Spendlove? We’re off. Hands down and into the boat.”

  “Now, sir? But . . .” The lad frowned.

  “Now, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie smouldered.

  “Very well, sir. Cox’n? Mr. Giles?”

  “’Scuse me, Captain, but I thought we’d be taking more supplies aboard,” Mr. Giles intruded, joggling his square-lensed spectacles in dismay. “There’s the salt-meats, the flour and dried fruits for—”

  “Now, Mister Giles, dammit!” Lewrie rasped.

  “Aye aye, sir.” Giles wilted. “This tobacco, though . . . ?”

  “Fetch along what you can carry, sir. But stir yerself.”

  As the gig stroked back to Jester, breasting and swooping with a sickening motion over the tumultuous sea, the brig’s yards were already being braced about, and the dhow was slow-ghosting into motion, falling off to the West on larboard tack, both beginning to gather way.

  Lewrie turned to watch them go, wishing them bad cess; the worst old Irish cess a body ever met. Storms, lashings of gales, whirlpools and maelstroms, sea-monsters with teeth the size of carriage-guns, with mouths as big as an admiral’s barge! Eat the bastard, somebody!