King, Ship, and Sword

by Dewey Lambdin

  “Signal from Cockerel, sir . . . a repeat from Modeste. For all ships, all private numbers . . . ,” Midshipman Warburton puzzled out once they were ten miles North of Cockerel, and steady on West-Nor’west, Half North. “ ‘Make All Sail Conformable With The Weather,’ sir!”

  “But of course he did!” Lewrie hooted. “I trust the ship is in your good hands, Mister Merriman?”

  “Well, aye, sir!” the Third Officer answered, not knowing quite what to say to such a statement; or was it a question of his ability?

  “Good,” Lewrie said, plumping down into his sling-chair. “Wake me at the start of the First Dog. Here, laddies!” he beckoned, patting his chest to attract his cats, Toulon and Chalky, who had been sunning themselves atop the tarpaulin cover of the hammock nettings. Both got to their paws, stretched, yawned, then hopped down to swarm up his legs to his chest for a spell of “wubbies.”

  As soon as the cats tired of that, Lewrie actually pulled down his hat over his eyes, crossed his arms, sprawled out his legs, and gave the impression that he really had fallen into a nod.

  Lt. Westcott came back to the quarterdeck after an hour or so of paper-shuffling and stopped dead at the top of the starboard companion-way ladder from the waist, cocking a brow at Lt. Merriman before going to join him.

  “The captain seems in rare takings, sir,” Merriman whispered to the First Officer, with a boyishly shy grin. “Higher spirits than he’s been.”

  “Is he really napping?” Westcott wondered aloud. Sure enough, Lewrie’s head was over to one side, his mouth slightly open, and there came a nasally sleep sound. “Good,” Lt. Westcott decided. “It’s been a year since the French. . . . He’s mourned enough. Dare I speak of it, mind.”

  “He’s a ship to command, I expect that helps,” Merriman opined. “And the chance for action . . . and revenge?”

  “Back where he belongs, in familiar waters, to boot,” Westcott added. “He might even be . . . happy. Better for us, to serve a happy captain, ’stead of a gloomer. Is that a word? Who cares?”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Lewrie cheated a bit, of course, by edging out North’rd ’til the mast-head lookouts could barely spot Cockerel, and covertly signalling Parham to take his Pylades out away from Reliant to the limits of her lookouts’ vision as well. Four more miles could make all the difference was his main thought—if the French had shied as far away from any patrolling vessels out of Jamaica as they could.

  Another day passed, full of boresome ship’s routine and gunnery practice; decks were scoured, meals were served, rum was issued twice a day, hammocks and bedding came up from below at 4 A.M. for stowing in stanchions and nettings, then taken below at sundown, after the Reliant stood Evening Quarters. Watches were set and rotated; Noon Sights were taken and their position reckoned by the height of the sun and by the half-hour casts of the chip-log aft. With stuns’ls set, the squadron reeled off an average of nine or ten knots during the daylight hours, much less in the darkness, but still managed runs of nearly 195–215 miles from one noon to the next. And they were running out of ocean. Another day, and they would be off the approaches to Lake Borgne and the first passes through the low-lying Mississippi Delta.

  Lewrie paced his quarterdeck, from taffrail flag lockers and lanthorns to the companionway ladder and back again, head down, hands in the small of his back, all his recent good humour gone; fretting he had been wrong, horribly wrong; fearing that the French had kept their two-day lead and had made good time, and were even now anchored at the Head of Passes off Fort Balise, ready to sail up the river to New Orleans . . . as safe and unassailable as babes in their mother’s arms!

  As he paced forrud towards the bows, the lowering sun was harsh in his eyes, still yellow, though in the next half-hour it would go red and amber as it neared the Western horizon. Already, the seas astern were beginning to be lost in dusk, and the seas ahead were a sheet of wrinkled copper fresh from the forge, with the wavetops tinged a coral red atop their fleeting blue-grey shadows.

  “Lovely sunset in a bit, sir,” Lt. Spendlove commented.

  “Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie all but snarled back.

  At the end of the First Dog Watch, which was due in a few minutes (dammit!), they would have to put over the helm and slink back to the South to take station five miles off Cockerel, shrinking the line to fifteen miles North-to-South, and the lookouts’ vision shrunk down to five miles or less, depending on cloud cover or the lack of moon.

  “Deck, there!” a lookout called down. “Pylades is haulin’ her wind an’ comin’ down t’us! Signallin’!”

  Lewrie looked about for one of the Midshipmen of the Watch and found Grainger first. “Aloft with you, Mister Grainger, with a glass and your signals book! Mister Rossyngton, make ready to answer with flag signals! Hop to it!”

  He watched Grainger scale the windward shrouds and rat-lines to the cat-harpings, go out the futtock shrouds to the main-top, then get up the narrower top-mast shrouds to the cross-trees to join the sailor posted there as a lookout; glared, rather, urging haste before the evening got too dark to see!

  “Deck, there!” the lookout bawled, relaying what Grainger told him, phrase by phrase. “Four . . . Strange . . . Ships! Night . . . Lights . . . on th’ Horizon! Chase! In Sight! Enemy In Sight!”

  “What course do they steer?” Lewrie shouted back, hands cupped either side of his mouth, in a quarterdeck, full-gale cry.

  “Deck, there!” the lookout prefaced, needlessly. “Chase . . . Is Stern-On! Bound Nor’-Nor’west!”

  “Chart!” Lewrie demanded, going to the binnacle cabinet and the traverse board. Lt. Spendlove spread out the chart, already pencilled with the Sailing Master’s reckoning of their position at noon, hours before, and a rough Dead Reckoning track of knots logged on the course since. “The Chandeleur Islands!” Lewrie exclaimed, poking a finger at the long, low-lying string of isles that lay almost dead on their own bows. “They’re going North-about the Chandeleurs, into sheltered water! Sail down the lee side, with Breton Island to starboard, and get to Passe a La Loutre, where it’d be hellish-hard t’have at ’em!”

  “Good Lord, sir . . . they just threw away their lead over us!” Lt. Spendlove said with a gasp. “It would have been safer to stand on direct for the East Pass, and they’d have been inside the river mouth hours ago! Why would they do that?”

  “There’s deep-enough water in the Mississippi Sound, up there,” Lewrie told him, sweeping a finger along the coast East of Lake Pontchartrain and the string of barrier islands that sheltered a very small settlement named Old Biloxi—Cat, Ship, Dog, and Horn Islands. “He could anchor there, he be hard to get at, and land his troops at Biloxi or send all his boats through the Rigolets Pass, here at the Spanish fort, Coquilles, and get into Pontchartrain and down to New Orleans by the back entrance. No one could touch ’em then. Then, if he wished, he could even land his boats here, from Lake Borgne, and it’s not fifteen miles up the Chef Menteur road to New Orleans proper!” Lewrie said, stabbing at the very beach where long ago he and an agent from Panton, Leslie & Company had explored a landing place for British soldiers!

  “He’ll use these little islands as a barrier between our ships and his, sir?” Spendlove excitedly said. “Even if he don’t know there are British ships so close?”

  “The Decean fellow on the lee side of ’em, and us, or anybody else’s squadron on the windward, and it’s as good as an iron shield,” Lewrie spat, standing back and letting one corner of the chart roll up. “Mister Rossyngton? Signal to Pylades . . . ‘Come Down To Me’!”

  He referred to the chart once more. The Chandeleurs . . . did anyone live there? He’d never enquired. It was a bow-shaped arc of sand isles and shoals, about fourty miles end to end. Lewrie dug into the binnacle cabinet for a rusty pair of dividers, stepping off distances.

  They were sixty miles or so off the Chandeleurs, the French not twelve miles Nor’west of Pylades when spotted, another twelve miles to the Nor’west of
Reliant, and were fourty miles off the island chain.

  Goin’ almost Due North now, so they don’t run aground on them in the dark, Lewrie quickly speculated; hmm . . . twenty miles on that course, say, twenty-five to round the end of the last one well clear o’ shoals? Under reduced sail, too, feelin’ their way in the dark! Damn’ slow, then . . . fourty miles Sou’west down the lee of the islands. They might be clear of ’em by dawn tomorrow!

  “Landin’ his toy soldiers ain’t enough,” Lewrie crowed, tossing the dividers back into the cabinet drawer. “He’s this close t’success, he’ll make for the Pass à La Loutre and get his ships up-river, too!”

  Lt. Spendlove leaned over the chart to where Lewrie’s finger rested, seaward of the passes but South of the Chandeleurs, windward of Breton Island and the Bay Ronde.

  “There by first light tomorrow, Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie said, feeling his excitement rising. “I think we’ve got ’em!”

  “Uhm . . . beg pardon, sir, but . . . how do we inform Modeste and Cockerel?” Spendlove asked, delighted, wolfishly excited himself, but a bit mystified. “Once it’s full dark, none of the night signals will be able to convey any sort of message.”

  “We go tell him, Mister Spendlove!” Lewrie crowed. “We barge up to him, invite ourselves to supper, and tell him! After all, where he is steering, the course we must steer to meet up with him, and a course t’place us where we need t’be, is pretty-much the same!”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Do you imagine, sir, that the reason the French sailed North-about the islands is a result of navigational error?” Lt. Westcott mused in a low mutter as they stood by the starboard bulwarks, near the beginning of the sail-tending gangway, with their telescopes extended as dawn began to break.

  “We know they’re cunny-thumbed and cack-handed the first days they manage t’get out t’sea, but . . . that cack-handed?” Lewrie gawped.

  “Thirty miles at the most off their intended landfall after the passage from Cape François . . . about thirteen hundred miles, all told, would be acceptable to most mariners, if their chronometers were out by a few seconds,” Westcott speculated. “Or they ran into a contrary slant of wind for a day or so, and their Dead Reckoning was off by just a tick.”

  “Just so long as they manage t’find their way back down to us, I could give a bigger damn,” Lewrie said in a soft growl, teeth bared in a whimsical smile. He lowered his glass and looked about the decks. HMS Reliant, all their ships, were darkened, their taffrail lanthorns extinguished, with only tiny glims burning by the sand-glasses at the forecastle belfry for a ship’s boy to determine the half hours to ring the watch bells, and a hooded one in the binnacle to illuminate the compass for the helmsmen, Sailing Master, and Officer of the Watch.

  They were all at Quarters, rousing the crews at the end of the Middle Watch at 4 A.M. and omitting the deck-scrubbing with holystones or dragged “bears,” or the rigging of the wash-deck pumps. Hammocks had been stowed in the stanchions down the tops of the bulwarks on either beam, rolled snug to pass through the ring measures and used as protection from small-arms fire and splinters. The hands had been fed early, then summoned to Quarters a little after 5 A.M., and the galley fires had been staunched.

  There had been time for Lewrie to sponge off with a pint of water and some soap, to shave, then dress in clean underclothes, with silk shirt and stockings. In hopes of what the day would bring, he and his officers and mids were dressed in their best uniforms, with pistols in their belts and swords at their sides.

  Chain slings were rigged aloft on the yards to keep them from crashing down if shot away; anti-boarding nets were laid out down both sides, ready to be hoisted; gun-port lids creaked open and softly came thumping back with the easy roll of the frigate as she crept along under “all plain sail,” with the main course at two reefs, ready for hauling up clear of catching fire from the discharges of their own cannon.

  And men stood swaying by their pieces, gun-tools in their hands. Powder monkeys had the first cartridges in their leather carriers as they knelt, facing the guns down the centreline. Lt. Simcock’s Marines were fully kitted out in red and scarlet, white breeches and knee-high black denim spatterdashes, white cross-belts and black leather accoutrements, standing down either gangway behind the bulwarks and hammock nettings, waiting. Below, in the waist, aft in Lewrie’s great-cabins, tiny red battle lanthorns glowed, guardedly out of sight from out-board, from a foe’s sight. The slow-match coiled round the water tubs between those guns had not yet been lit; if the flintlock strikers failed to ignite or broke a flint or spring, the fuse could light the feather quills in the touch-holes, sparking off the fine-mealed priming powder.

  “We’ll be silouetted against the dawn, I suppose,” Lt. Westcott said on, rocking on the balls of his booted feet.

  “Good odds,” Lewrie agreed, grunting. “No helpin’ it. Pray the Frog lookouts are blind, or late in bein’ posted aloft, ’stead of the decks. Gives us five minutes more t’close ’em?”

  “They go about, we’ll just chase them,” Westcott said, sighing as he lifted his telescope again to peer ahead off the starboard bows.

  Lewrie looked up, but could not quite see the long, lazy whipping of the commissioning pendant. The wind was scant that morning, a touch cool on the skin from the starboard quarter; they were angled enough off the winds to be able to feel the wind, for once. He turned and peered aft at Modeste. She was a large, dark shadow, as wide and bluff as a baleful barn, her grey, weathered sails eerily rustling to the wind’s vagaries, equally dark against the pre-dawn gloom. She was only a little over a cable’s distance astern, yet Lewrie had to recall what she looked like bows-on, with little more than the faint mustachio of foam under her forefoot, that creamed to either side of her bows, to positively mark her place.

  Damme, is she . . . fuzzy? Lewrie thought, pinching the bridge of his nose and rubbing his eyes as false dawn only slightly began to grey the horizon astern, revealing charcoal-sketch impressions of the ships aft of Reliant. Are my eyes goin’? he wondered; No, it’s mist! Mine arse on a band-box, of all the shitten luck!

  The false dawn sketched his own decks as he looked forward, gave slightly more detail of artillery, sailors, sails, rigging, and masts—all misted with a thin pre-dawn fog!

  “Land Ho!” a lookout shouted down. “Island on th’ starb’d side! Two point off th’ starb’d bows! Five mile off!”

  “The Sou’west tip of the last Chandeleur,” Lewrie growled as he went to the Sailing Master’s chart. “Be-fogged, though, we’re closer than five miles, if he can see it. Three miles, more-like, sir?”

  “It appears to be a thin fog, sir,” Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, cautiously pointed out, using dividers to measure possible distances, then lean closer and peer at the depth notations. “Still in deep water, sir, do we hold to this course.”

  “Mist or fog, however thin, though,” Lt. Westcott fretted near them, fingers flexing on the hilt of his scabbarded sword. “We could miss them in it, even so, sir.”

  “Should’ve remembered,” Lewrie muttered, turning away to pace to the forward edge of the quarterdeck. He chid himself for forgetting that the coasts hereabouts were so low-lying and marshy, the summers as humid as Canton, Calcutta, or the Ivory Coast of Africa, and a cooler sea air just naturally bred fogs and mists.

  “Deck, there!” the lookout shouted once more, just as the first hints of true dawn and the first colours could be ascertained. “Ships! Four ships, hull-up . . . fine on th’ starb’d bows!”

  “Mister Grainger!” Lewrie bellowed over his shoulder as he lifted his telescope to peer out-board, a sense of relief, of success, beginning to fill him. “Hoist to Modeste . . . ‘Enemy In Sight’!”

  “Aye aye, sir!” the fifteen-year-old piped back.

  Four Bells chimed from the foc’s’le belfry; 6 A.M. and it was true dawn at last; close enough to the exact time for sunrise noted in the ephemeris. Grey murk retreated Westward as brightness surged up from th
e East. Coastal waters went from black to steely grey, then to dark blue with flecks of white. There were thin clouds and the first pale smears of blue skies. There was the mist, of course, a pearlescence to the West, closer to the shore, where it would be thicker.

  “Next hoist to Modeste, Mister Grainger,” Lewrie ordered as he returned to the helm. “Make it ‘Four Ships, Fine On Starboard Bows.’ ”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Tip of the last o’ the Chandeleurs here,” Lewrie eagerly said, jabbing at the chart. “We’re about here, and the French are . . . there! Do we bear off a point or two to larboard, and we’ll have them on our starboard beams, bows-on to us, and open to rakin’ fire. Or we hold t’this course, and we barge into them, bows-on to their larboard batteries.”

  “Up to Modeste, that,” Lt. Westcott commented, shrugging.

  “Aye, but I’d prefer to haul off . . . place ourselves ’twixt them and the East Pass into the river,” Lewrie schemed aloud. “They’d have to fight through us or go about and run back the way they came, with Breton Island t’larboard, and the waters shoalin’ fast, the closer to Biloxi or Lake Borgne they go. They fight us or they go aground, up yonder, and strike their colours.”

  “They’re hull-up already?” Lt. Westcott said, looking dubious. “Surely they’ve spotted us, round the time we spotted them, sir.”

  “Aloft, there!” Lewrie shouted, cupping his hands about his mouth. “Have they turned away? And what is the order of their sailing?”

  “Sailin’ as before, sir!” the lookout replied. “Same course! A two-decker leadin’ . . . then a frigate, another two-decker, and another frigate, the hind-most! Makin’ sail, sir!”

  “They’ve seen us, right enough,” Lewrie told his officers. “On a tear t’get into the Delta, to the Head of Passes, before we can close ’em! And in the same order as they were last night, with their troop ship to leeward so they could protect her.”