Once Capt. Treghues had signalled that the trade would, indeed, stand “off-and-on” the coast ‘til dawn, they had sailed legs North and South abeam the wind, with the Indiamen back to their usual custom of reducing sail to bare steerageway, which had let the avid fishermen in the crew dip a line, ending in the catch of a middling-sized tunny, which had been shared between the gunroom and the captain’s table.
They had had reconstituted “portable soup,” a sea-pie made from shredded salt-beef and salt-pork, diced potatoes fried with bacon, and the tunny for the last course, great slabs of it, dredged in flour and crumbled biscuit, spices, and lemon, then fried in oil. There had been a decent claret with the sea-pie, and an experimental white wine bought off a homebound Indiaman. One of the first things the Dutch settlers at the Cape had planted was vineyards, though with mixed results, so far. The white had gone well with the fish, though not as smooth or sweet as a German hock, but miles better than the Navy-issued “Miss Taylor,” the thin, vinegary, and acidy wine that could double for paint thinner, and Lewrie was intrigued enough to think of buying more, once at anchor.
There had also been the promise of an apple stack-cake to come, a dessert that his wife Caroline had brought from her native Cape Fear in North Carolina, shrivelled and wrinkly older Kentish apples that had not gone over, or been wormed, pulped and boiled with dollops of molasses and sugar, then spread thick between several layers of pancakes. Once the tablecloth would be removed, there would have been a tray of “bought” sweet biscuits, nuts, and port. Midshipman Larkin to propose the King’s Toast, Mr. Winwood to make one to the Navy, and, as it was a Saturday evening, it would have fallen to Lewrie to propose a traditional Navy toast, “To Our Wives And Sweethearts, May They Never Meet!,” which Lewrie found excrutiatingly apt.
But, just as Aspinall was lifting the cloth cover from the cake, the Marine sentry slammed his musket butt on the deck outside, with a strident, rather urgent, cry of “Second Off ‘cah…SAH!”
“Enter, Mister Catterall,” Lewrie bade, cocking a brow over Lt. Catterall’s exquisite timing, imagining that the Second Lieutenant, who had the appetite of all three midshipmen together, had thought to wangle himself a hefty slice of cake, or at least a free cup of coffee.
“Signal rockets from the convoy, sir!” Lt. Catterall announced, though, his usually saturnine demeanour much agitated. “Fusees and an alert gun from Horatius, as well!”
“Pipe ‘All Hands,’ Mister Catterall, and Beat to Quarters, at once,” Lewrie snapped, rising and tossing his napkin into his plate. “Sorry ‘bout the cake, gentlemen, but it appears there may be Frogs in the offing. Your posts… shoo, scat, younkers!”
As they quickly rose and tumbled out without ceremony, Lewrie went aft for his baldric and hanger-sword, looking about for Aspinall and his Cox’n, Andrews.
“Andrews, do you fetch up my pair of pistols, soon as you can. Aspinall… save the cake, if that’s possible. Then, see yourself and the cats to the orlop, with the Carpenter’s crew.”
In a twinkling, sailors would rush to man the 12-pounders mounted right-aft in Lewrie’s cabins, knock down the deal partitions, and bundle fragile furniture, sure to be turned into deadly flying splinters in battle, below. One last snatch off a rack in the chart-space for his cocked hat, and he was off himself, out onto the main deck and up the windward ladderway to the quarterdeck, amid the mad, but well-drilled, bustle of sailors clearing their ship for action. Off-watch men rushed up with the long sausages of their hammocks and bedding, perhaps not rolled as tightly as they would each morning to pass through the ring-measure, to stow them in the iron stanchions and nettings, to turn them into a feeble defence against grapeshot, splinters, and musket fire.
“Where away?” Lewrie demanded, grabbing a spare night-glass by the binnacle cabinet. The Marine drummer was beating the long roll, bosuns’ calls were peeping, hundreds of feet, shod or bare, thundered on oak decks, and Proteus nigh-shuddered to the sounds of loose items, sea-chests and stools being rushed to the orlop or holds, mess-tables being hoisted to the overheads on the gun-deck, of gun-tools removed from their overhead racks.
“Starboard side of the convoy, sir,” Lt. Langlie breathlessly reported in the dark. He and the other officers and warrants had come in a rush from their own suppers. “Lieutenant Catterall reported that he’d seen a rocket and fusee from Stag, then heard the night signal gun ‘board Horatius, before he summoned you. Ah, there’s another!”
One Indiaman, then a second astern of her at the forward end of the starboard-most of two columns, both were now burning blue warning fusees high aloft, and launching amber rockets from their swivel-guns.
Lewrie lifted the night-glass to his right eye, straining ahead and to starboard. The convoy was at present bound South, about twenty miles off the shore, a dark coast lit only by a single, feeble bonfire atop either the Lion’s Rump or Green Point, near the entrance to Table Bay, high enough above the sea to still be somewhat visible. They had nearly sailed that sea-mark below the horizon, and within the hour had need to come about and plod North, but for this.
Lewrie picked out ships by their large taffrail lanthorns: HMS Horatius far ahead, and now sporting a blue fusee at her main-top, and four Indiamen astern of her, the “threatened” pair that sailed on the starboard flank also lit up with the bright, blue pinpoint lights on their mastheads. They were turning away to larboard, pairs of stern lanthorns pinching together, and the vaguest hints of canvas growing like spectral spooks in the faint starlight, and what was thrown by a mere sliver of moon. Farther out lay Captain Philpott’s HMS Stag, a black smear of hull, a pair of taffrail lights, and her upper sails visible by the burning fusee at her mainmast tip.
Damn this bloody thing! Lewrie furiously thought, cursing the night telescope, for its series of lenses was one short to allow more light into the tube, making everything appear backwards, and upside down. With the glass, Stag was headed North; without, she was headed South…foreshortening as she turned up into the West wind to face…something. HMS Horatius was also turning Sou’-Sou’west, as close as she could lie to those winds unless she tacked and came about.
“Can’t make out a bloody thing,” Lewrie griped aloud, lowering the telescope and rubbing his offending eye. “There’s something up to the West of them, but damned if I can spot it. Any word from Grafton?”
“None, sir,” Langlie was forced to say. “Same flares as us.”
“Well, of course,” Lewrie said with a frustrated sigh. Captain Treghues possessed the customary Navy signals book, as well as the one of his own devising, but both of them were based on the precondition of daylight! Nighttime signals could alert the merchantmen and warships to threat, but could not convey any tactical orders as to which action they might take, together. It was up to each captain’s judgement as to how he might respond from his own, scattered, position at one of the convoy’s four corners. Here, on the larboard, and landward, flank of the dark ships, it was up to Lewrie alone how best to act.
“Now, the near-hand column’s hauling their wind, sir,” Langlie pointed out. With his naked eyes, Lewrie took note of the two nearest Indiamen’s lights; their hulls were beginning to occlude the starboard lanthorns, the blue masthead fusees swinging almost atop their glowing larboard taffrail lights.
“We’re going t’get trampled, are we not careful,” Lewrie griped. “Shake out the reefs in courses and tops’ls, Mister Langlie, and get a way on, so we pass ahead of those tubs.”
“Aye aye, sir! Topmen! Topmen aloft, trice up and lay out!”
“Great-guns manned, loaded, and ready, sir!” Lt. Catterall said from the foot of the quarterdeck ladder. “The ship is in all respects prepared for action.”
The gun-deck forward and below Lewrie’s post amidships by those freshly hammock-stiffened quarterdeck nettings was dimly lit for night action. A well-spaced row of battle lanthorns marched down each beam, thickly-glassed and made of heavy metal, so gun crews could have just enough illumination to see
to their duties, robust enough to resist a spill of the candle flames inside them, and create a fatal fire or an explosion of a serge powder cartridge after it had been removed from its wood or leather carrying sleeve. Beside them, tiny red “fireflies” glowed between the glossy, black-painted artillery; smouldering ends of slow-match coils wrapped round the tops of the swab-water tubs by each piece, the last-resort means of igniting the priming quills full of the finest mealed gunpowder, should the flint in more modern flintlock strikers break or fail. Far up forward, there were another pair of small lights by the forecastle belfry, normally used by the sleepy ship’s boys, whose duty it was to keep track of the half-hour and hour glasses, turn them, and ring the bells of the watch.
“Charge both batteries, Mister Catterall,” Lewrie ordered. “We don’t wish to be taken by surprise. Open the ports and run the guns into battery, both sides…just in case.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
A quick look astern satisfied him that the convoy was turning alee, all of them, earlier than scheduled. A quarter-hour longer, and they would have been alerted by Grafton to “Ready About,” and, at the proper night signal—a fusee at the end of each foremast royal yard—would have hauled their wind and worn off the wind, as much as one might be expected from civilian shipmasters. Now, they were wearing individually, the most threatened bearing down on the larboard ships, startling them to haul off and fall alee like stampeding sheep, order lost, and if this turned out to be nothing, they’d be half the following day rounding them back up!
“Both the near-hand merchantmen seem to be bearing astern of us, sir,” Lt. Langlie announced, with the faintest bit of relief apparent in his voice. “Should we be going about as well, Captain?”
“I’ve a mind to let ‘em fall far enough astern, then tack, and see what aid we may give Stag and Horatius,” Lewrie decided, looking forward and to starboard, again, noting where Capt. Graves’s lumbering two-decker had gotten to in the meantime. “A moment, Mister Langlie.”
The threat seemed to be from seaward, but…on such an ebony night, nothing could be taken for granted. The French squadrons that haunted the Cape passage and the Indian Ocean were rumoured to be at least two large 36-gun or 38-gun frigates, operating separately, but paired with one, possibly two, corvettes apiece, three-masted, full-rigged, equivalent to Sloops of War in the Royal Navy, armed with a battery ranging from 14 to 20 guns, and sometimes sailing in concert with well-armed, over-manned privateers, as well. Such a pack could prowl like wolves—sea wolves!
And, like wolves, Lewrie realised with his “wary bone” wakening, could attack from all quarters, not just the one, dashing in to nip or intimidate, ‘til their quarry was encircled and doomed.
“Mister Winwood?” Lewrie called over his shoulder.
“Aye, sir. Here,” the Sailing Master reported, coming to join him from his usual post before the binnacle cabinet and double helm.
“We’ve a goodly way on? Sufficient for a quick, clean wear?”
“So I would adjudge it, sir, aye,” Winwood ponderously answered.
“And, no reefs, rocks, or shoals to loo’rd?”
“Not for at least sixteen or seventeen miles, no, sir,” Winwood was forced to avow, after a wince and a tooth-sucking noise, obviously much more comfortable with such a statement after a long perusal over his charts, a set of fresh star sights, taking the height of the moon by back-staff, and auguring the entrails of the odd passing gull.
“Very well, sir, we’ll come about,” Lewrie announced. “Mister Catterall? Check tackle, and be ready for a wear. Mister Langlie, I wish hands to stations, ready to come about to larboard, then steer a course Nor’easterly.”
“Aye aye, sir! Bosun! Pipe ‘Stations For Wearing Ship’!”
Lewrie paced to the leeward bulwarks to study the ocean where they meant to go as the fresh bustle broke out round his ears. With the heavy night-glass to his eye once more, he saw grey-black sea and a few white-flecked rollers, that now and again caught the faint glim of the waning moon, a complete pall of utter blackness that showed the veriest upper tier of far-off African cliffs, thin on the horizon. A complete sweep from Due South to Due North showed nothing else.
“Up mains’l and spanker, clear away the after bowlines! Brace in the after-yards! Up helm!” Langlie was bawling through his speaking-trumpet, and Proteus began to swing, to heel over as she slowed, bowsprit and jib-boom sweeping alee across the black face of the night.
The winds dead aft, now. “Clear away head bowlines, lay the headyards square! Shift over the head sheets!” Lewrie walked over to the starboard side with his telescope, looking into the stern quarter, and abeam as Proteus continued to swing, the wind now striking her on her larboard quarters. “Man the main tack and sheet! Clear away rigging! Spanker outhaul! Clear away the brails!”
There seemed to be nothing dangerous to landward. Lewrie eased his straining eye by lowering the night-glass for a second, as sudden gunfire rolled down on them from windward!
He spun about to catch the ruddy after-flash from gun muzzles, the briefly-lit spurts of whitish-grey smoke from some ship’s pieces, and the pyrotechnic, spiralling yellowish embers from cartridge cloth. Distant as that gunfire was, his ears could discern the deep boomings of 24-pounders of Horatius’s lower-deck artillery, the crisper barks of what he took to be HMS Stag’s 12-pounders, and some light, terrier-like “yaps” from even lighter guns!
“Missing all the fun!” he heard Midshipman Grace whisper in the relative silence, once those distant guns fell silent.
“Brace up headyards, overhaul weather lifts…haul aboard!” Lt. Langlie bellowed, as the ship came rapidly back to early abeam of the winds.
“Mister Catterall,” Lewrie called down in the tumult. “Man the starboard battery. Excess hands to chock trucks and snug the run-out tackles, then re-join their mates!”
“Aye aye, sir!”
“Steady out bowlines, haul taut the weather trusses, braces, and lifts!” Lt. Langlie concluded, at last. “Clear away on deck, there!”
They were about, bearing off the night wind to the Nor’east, and, by the sound of the hull, making a goodly way, again, well clear of the ships of their convoy, now fleeing North in no particular order, with, as Lewrie could espy, the sluggard Festival and HMS Grafton now ahead of them all.
“Thankee, Mister Langlie, well done,” Lewrie took time to say as he took one last, long sweep of the sea to the East and Sou’east, but was drawn back to larboard by a new storm of gunfire, sounding as if Horatius had spotted something and had loosed an entire two-deck broadside at it.
“Deck, there!” a lookout atop the mizen shouted down. “Black ship astern the starboard quarter, close in!”
“Up helm, Mister Langlie! Stand by, the starboard battery, and be ready to engage, short range!” Lewrie cried, whirling about, again. “Get her bows down and—!”
But, it was too late. Somehow, a ship had sneaked up on them, all her lights extinguished, perhaps with her sails sooted, or so old that dark tan, weathered canvas would not reflect enought light to see her by! Even as the wheel was put hard-over, more gunfire split the night! Until the very moment that her guns lit off, no one on deck could have spotted her, not the night lookouts normally posted at the bulwarks, not the watch officers, not even Lewrie, for all his urgent peering! He froze, caught, like his frigate, with his breeches down, and there was nothing else to do but stand and take it!
BAM—BAM—BAM! Eight guns hammered out a slow, metronomic broadside as the hostile ship crossed Proteus’s stern, serving her a vicious rake, by the size of the muzzle blasts at a range of about two cables! Round-shot screamed or moaned, the howling rising in tone as they lashed towards them. Then came the crashing noises, the sound of timbers being smashed with the parrot “Rawrk!” of rivened wood, the shattering of glass sash-windows a few feet below the taffrails as the round-shot pierced through Lewrie’s great-cabins to bowl, richochet, and carom past where the temporary partitions that normally s
hielded his privacy had stood, down the gun-deck among sailors standing by their pieces, shattering truck-carriages, glancing off pristine white-sanded decks, thudding into the mizen-mast trunk, sparking off gun tubes with deep, bell-like Bongs!, and raising a cloud of splintered wood flying like terrified pigeons into flesh!
Eight guns…corvette! Lewrie’s panicky brain told him as he stood stiff-legged, almost unable to move, to think of much more; She shot her bolt!Minute and a half t’re-load. Good as our Navy?
There was a great pall of spent powder smoke astern, the hint of masts and sails above it, and the fore end of a warship emerging from behind it, sailing what looked to be Nor’westerly.
“Belay the last helm order!” Lewrie shouted, forcing himself to motion, seething with sudden rage for being caught so flat-footed, so stupidly, and with shame for letting it happen, to him, to his ship! “Put yer helm down, steer Due North!”
Might open us to another rake, but, do we get a bit off from her … ! he thought. Open the range, duck into the gloom, and hope the French corvette— for what else could it be?—lost sight of them for a moment. The wind was from the West, and the corvette was close-hauled, steering no better than Nor’-Nor’west, six points off of the wind, and obviously trying to get after the convoy and take at least one prize. With a relatively clean bottom and “all plain sail” aloft, she might attain nine or ten knots, slightly better than what Proteus was making, Lewrie’s senses told him. They could not hope to surge up abeam of her to swat the corvette with their heavier broadside, but…what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander!
“Mister Langlie, you still with us?” Lewrie called out.
“Aye, sir. Still here,” came a reassuringly firm reply.
“Good. I want that saucy bastard! Free the last of the night reefs from the t’gallants, let fall and sheet home the royals, and let the main course stay full, fire hazard bedamned,” Lewrie schemed aloud. “That Frenchman’s after an Indiaman, hard on the wind, most-like, and should be about…there,” he said, pointing out into the darkness off the larboard quarters. “Perhaps three or four cables off. With luck, we may be able to out-reach her and tack ‘cross her bows, then serve her a bow-rake!”
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