"They be makin' sail, sir! Both ships!"
"Pity there ain't no prize money for captured pirate ships," Fellows sighed. "A full-rigged ship of theirs'd bring a pretty penny."
"Shoals to starboard! Five cables!"
"One point to windward, Quartermaster," Lewrie said with a nod. "Keep her in deep water, well as you may."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
"Shoals to larboard, five cables! Clear water ahead!"
"Center of the channel, then, Quartermaster," Lewrie beamed.
Whippet came gliding east down her channel, flags flying and under all plain sail, a marvelous sight against the dawn. The suspect vessels were now underway, having cut their cables andhoisted courses and jibs, not trying to free any tops'ls. Perhaps short-handed, Alan wondered, with half their crews ashore for some reason? The larger ship could find no escape over the southern route into the Little Bahama Banks. According to the charts, south of Walker's Cay there were Triangle Rocks, Double-Breaster Bars, and the Barracouta Banks, where the depths shoaled to ten feet or less.
"Damned fool!" Lewrie spat as he used bis spyglass from his perch on the after shroud lines, halfway up to the fighting top. The full-rigged ship was turning west to challenge Whippetl And a moment later, he could espy ruddy blooms of gunfire from her! "Idiot!" She fired—a hanging offense!
Whippet veered northerly, wearing ship to bare her starboard battery. Before the dull bangs of the strange ship's artillery had even reached them, Whippet's side lit up orange and red in a gush of powder smoke, the broadside tolling steady as a gun salute from bows to stern. The unidentified ship quivered and pulsed in the round ocular of his telescope as she was hulled. Her main yard leapt free of all restraints and came crashing down in silence, her lower mizzenmast jerked and splintered, sheering off the upper masts to fall like a sawn tree and drape over her stern and leeward side. She bore off to the south to seek refuge.
"She'll be on our shoal if she shaves the southern bank of the channel that close!" Fellows was hooting in derision.
"She'll hope to get past before Whippet can come about," Alan heard Ballard state calmly.
But Whippet wore once more, this time pointing her bows toward Alacrity, heeling over with the press of wind as she gave her foe one more timed broadside. The range could not have been half a rnile, and Alan could see pieces of timber, bulwarks and decking flying in puffs of dust and smoke. The ship bore away even steeper, looking as if her master was trying to tack across the wind, even as Whippet bore down on her for another broadside.
"Schooner dead ahead, fine on the bows, sir!" a lookout called.
Lewrie swiveled about and saw their particular foe about a mile away and closing. Down-sun as Alacrity was, and with their attention drawn to the battle, they might not yet have spotted Alacrity as she came up from the lee of sunrise, dark against the last of the night's horizon.
"Mister Ballard, broadsides to either beam!" Lewrie shouted as he jumped down to his quarter-deck. "We'll wear across the channel to block it. Mister Fowles, your gunners'll have to hop lively for me!"
"They will, sir!"
"Helm up to windward to bare the larboard battery."
Alacrity turned nor'east, almost running with the wind. Her gun ports flew open with a crash, and the hands tailed on the run-out tackles 'til the carriages butted home against the bulwarks.
"As you bear... fire!"
Seven-cables' range; three-quarters of a nautical mile, and cold iron barrels tore the morning apart as the six-pounders barked and came thundering inboard to snub on the thick breeching-ropes! Shot struck fantastkrplumes of spray short of the schooner in a ragged line before her bows.
"Shoals ahead, three cables, deep water to larboard!"
"Helm alee, Mister Neill. Bear up, close-hauled, Mister Ballard!" Lewrie ordered. "Stand by the starboard battery!"
Gun captains transferred to the starboard side while loaders and rammermen, tacklemen and powder monkeys remained to larboard to complete swabbing out and reloading the expended guns. To carry the full complement of five men per gun deemed necessary to serve their six-pounders would have taken fifty men out of the sixty-five adults aboard, so it was standard drill to work both sides short-handed in preparation for moments such as this, and required only thirty.
"Open yer gun ports!" Fowles was droning on. "Done, larboard? Come run out starboard. Gun captains, point! Cock yer locks!"
"Fire as you bear, sir!" Lewrie shouted.
The schooner had turned away to the west, almost in-irons into the teeth of the wind, and, if she held that course, would end up on that uncharted shoal of theirs.
"Fire!" Fowles called as the deck rose up level and hung still for a moment. "Ah, yes by Christ! Oh, well shot, my bully lads!"
They'd fired individually, but on the uproll, which forced them to hurry in tugging the lanyards on the flintlock strikers, so it was more a planned broadside. This time they hit her and she shook like a piece of meat taken by a shark, and paid off the wind in disarray to point her bows at Alacrity again!
"Hands wear ship, ready the larboard battery!"
Lewrie was zigzagging up the channel, blocking any hope of escape, and going wide to present all his guns.
"Fight me, you poltroon!" Lewrie screamed across the waters. "Got no stomach for a real foe, you murderin' bastards?"
The schooner fell away to run sou'east, dangerously close to the sand bars south of Walker's Cay, trying to shave a passage down the channel. Alacrity served her another broadside, then wore onceagain to run due east to block that side of the narrow passage even as the gunners got off another broadside from the larboard guns.
"Shoals ahead, two cables!" some lookout screeched on the bow.
He could not hold this course a minute longer, Alan realized. The schooner's master was praying that he'd have to bear away soon, whilst he could continue to run south and perhaps get astern of the gun ketch that was tearing his little command to bits.
" 'Vast, there!" Lewrie shouted. He was out of syncopation in his turnings with the schooner. "Mister Ballard, lay us full-and-by to weather on the larboard tack. Then once you have way 'nough, tack us and wear about sou'east, to keep us ahead of them!"
"Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard grinned, nodding with understanding. "Hands to the sheets and braces, hands wear ship aweather! Mister Harkin, prepare for stays!"
Alacrity swung away from the schooner, almost showing her her stem, but kept on turning, crossing the eye of the wind and heeling over with the wind on the starboard side, pointing sou'west.
The schooner's captain took the opportunity to run south, and steer wide of the threatening bars and shoals.
Then Alacrity wore, falling off the wind in a small circle to race back across that narrow channel on her best point of sail with a bone of foam in her teeth, and her larboard battery ready once more.
There would be no escape.
"As you bear... fire!" Fowles cried.
The schooner was smothered in spray as even the two-pounder boat-guns got into the act from fo'c's'le and quarter-deck at a bare two-cables' range. She staggered under the impact of solid round-shot, and swung up toward the wind as if to cut across Alacrity's stern.
"Shoals ahead, one cable!"
"Helm down, Mister Ballard. Beat sou'west and keep ahead of her. And be ready to haul your wind should she duck back towards the shoals on the east side of the channel."
"She's in-irons!" a lookout called as most of the crew and the officers were busy with the maneuver and the reloading. "They're all aback! Takin' t'the boats, sir!"
The schooner was being abandoned. One small launch was being led around from astern, another was already filled with men and was being rowed east towards the shoals, the oars worked like hummingbirds' wings.
"Wear about to the sou'east!" Lewrie demanded. "Get the guns on them before they escape!"
But before they could fire more than two broadsides, they had to turn once more to keep off the shoals themselves, and their
route was almost blocked by the abandoned schooner, listing and drifting towards the shoals. The boats with their two-foot draft got over the shoals and bars, and into deeper water off Grand Cay.
"Cease fire!" Lewrie shouted, fuming. Once more, pirates had outsmarted him and escaped him. "Mister Ballard, secure the people from Quarters. Send Mister Odrado, with my cox'n Cony, over to take charge of the schooner before she takes the ground. Mister Harkin, we'll fetch-to! I'll see to this, Arthur. You carry on."
"Very well, sir."
"Helm alee, lay us close-hauled on the larboard tack, Mister Neill. Stations for stays, Mister Harkin! Fo'c's'le captain, we'll leave the jibs on larboard tack! Brace-tenders, prepare to back the main tops'l! Ready about? Helm alee!"
Alacrity rounded up as if she would cross the wind's eye, but stalled in-irons, her gaff sails trying to drive her forward on the starboard tack, but her backed jibs counteracting their force like brakes, so she cocked up into the wind and came to a halt, slowly drifting north on the current and making a tiny leeway.
"A neat morning's work, sir," Fellows congratulated, swiping his thinning ginger hair and looking more like a harried clerk. "The schooner took. Whippet with her foe aground in the north channel, and another pirate band with their business stopped."
"Ummph!" Lewrie commented.
"Damme, the way we handled her, sir, sweet an' fleet as some pleasure yacht! My word, sir... 'twas hellish fun, that."
"They got away, though," Lewrie glowered.
"Can't have it all, sir," Fellows chuckled.
"Why the devil not, Mister Fellows? Just why the devil not?"
Chapter 9
"It's a regular treasure-trove ashore, sir," Lieutenant Ballard reported to Lewrie and Rodgers. "Arms and powder, of course; money and plate. But there's heaps of cargo, covered with sailcloth and palmettos. A ship's chandlery and fancy-goods shop in one. An ocean of drink, too, sirs. Fancy wines, brandies, rums... I've put a guard over that so the hands don't get at it"
"Yet who shall guard the guardians?" Rodgers mused. "Loot, from a dozen ships, more like," Lewrie commented. "And that ship out yonder, that Guineaman, bung-full to her deckheads with general cargo, too," Rodgers grinned, a very happy man. "No manifest, goods from Cuba, from New York an' Baltimore an' Charleston aboard, goods from Europe ... yet, gentlemen, yet... no recent voyages in her log t'any o' those places! Like Lewrie here says, it's loot, bought from the pirates that took it."
"Well, sir ..." Ballard pouted, "there's a civilian merchant ashore in charge of the cache, a Mister Runyon, who claims the goods are warehoused here, that they're held until the prices go up in the winter when..."
"Aye, just like this Captain Malone of Guineaman claims that he was taken by buccaneers!" Rodgers hooted in derision. "Oh, he's wily, he is! Yet when I demanded he produce the pirates who sailed her out an' fired into a King's Ship, he cannot. Swears they went over the side an' escaped in a ship's boat, an' he an' his crew got free too late t'save her from groundin' on the shoals. Not from where I was watchin', they didn't! And do you know who Guineaman belongs to, eh? A Bay Street merchant name o' John Finney. 'Calico Jack' Finney, as he's better known in these parts."
"Finney!" Lewrie exclaimed, startled out of his skin, but glad the next moment. "Merciful God, that's wondrous! I mean, I've met the man. Thought he wasn't straight, from the very first Heard he was cherry-merry with cut-throats and such. And that pirate band I did for was led by a friend of his. A so-called former friend! Why, he must be in league with 'em!"
"Well, o' course he's in league with 'em!" Rodgers chortled. "Always has been, always will be, far's I know! Ran an 'all-nations' an' a buttock-shop for 'em, got rich off their trade, made loans for 'em, traded mis for that since he set foot in Nassau. He..."
"Excuse me, Commander Rodgers," Ballard said with a cough. "I did learn that this Runyon fellow ashore is one of Finney's agents!"
"Well, there you are, then," Rodgers exulted triumphantly. "We have proof positive against him, even if our pirates did escape us."
"Well, sir, this Runyon claims, as I said a moment ago, that the goods are cached here secretly, without having to pay duties or bonded-warehouse fees in Nassau, until hurricane season ends and the shipping trade across the Atlantic or down from America ceases until spring. Then they're loaded aboard his ships and sold at the peak of their scarcity, when their value is highest. All over, sir."
"He just came out an' admitted it?" Rodgers said, going bug-eyed. "Well, damme, the fellow's just convicted himself, an' his master with him! That's confession o' smugglin'!"
"Not exactly, sir," Ballard objected. "In a court of law, he could make it sound a plausible defense. If pirates discovered his secret cache, they would be tempted to raid it. He might even try to prove that a consortium of other Bay Street members put them up to it, to eliminate the competition! Then, should the duties be paid at Nassau when he declares them..."
"Ah, rot!" Rodgers snorted. "Now here's the way I see this was done, sirs. Finney does nought of the dirty work, see? But his old mates pirate inbound ships, and some passin' near enough. They have to have a method of profitin', and Finney's their middle man, their shore agent if you will. They'll keep the money, jewels and plate, but the dry goods and such, the foodstuffs ... Finney's agents meet 'em in just such a hidey-hole as this 'un. There's a deal o' lonely cays in the Bahamas with decent harbours, safe from pry in' eyes. A swap is made. Give 'em a quarter o' what it's worth—half-crown to the pound, perhaps less. They keep what takes their fancy, vessels they deem faster and better armed, and play the upright tradin' men in public, anywhere they please, between voyages."
"And they scuttle the poor ships far out at sea, along with theircrews and passengers," Lewrie stuck in. "Once they've had fun with some of them. Damn their blood."
"Or resell some o' the ships down in the West Indies or over in America for even more profit, aye," Rodgers grimaced. "A European oak-built ship'd be worth two Yankee ships made o' then-poor excuse for ship wood. Might even create new documents for 'em to ease the sales. But aye, it's wholesale murder For the victims. Then, here's the part where Finney makes his money back. He ships the pirated goods to New Providence, Eleuthera, Great Exuma, over to the Abacos, down to Long or Cat Island and sells 'em as clean goods!"
"Would he not have to pay duty on them, sir?" Ballard asked. "Land them in-bond first? In public? So..."
"Even so, what's the cost to him?" Rodgers scoffed. "Were he to send ships across the Atlantic out of season, pay an honest price for a cargo an' pay duty, it's a losin' proposition, or a damn' thin one, what with insurance and all. But, to get a cargo for a fourth its worth, sell it dear as salvation when no one else has the fancy stuff... well, what's a few shillings per hundredweight matter?"
"And once landed and re-shipped, they're legal," Lewrie grasped. "With Bahamian authorities, on Hispaniola or Cuba ...anywhere!"
"And sky's the limit on what he could reap!" Rodgers laughed. "Oh, we see his vessels settin' out for England, for the Continent, for America... and we see 'em come back months later. But do they ever really go anywhere, I ask you?"
"Some must, sir," Ballard pointed out, ever the keen one. "Aye, some must, granted," Rodgers allowed. "But enough come to lairs like this 'un, especially in winter. Only his most trusted masters and crews. He probably has captains and hands who never see this part o' his trade."
"So he might undercut the other merchants only slightly," Lewrie exclaimed. "Whilst the others do business at ten or fifteen percent profit, Lord... Finney must earn fifty or seventy percent!"
"Exactly!" Rodgers said.
"But why, sir?" Lewrie asked, perplexed. "Damme, the risk of being found out sooner or later... he made over 200,000 pounds from the war, I'm told. Owns a dozen fine ships, a planting and that big house in town ... a hero and all..."
"And partnership in a bank," Rodgers added. "Heard tell he put 60,000 up as his share to launch it proper. Far's we know, he plays banker and ship's-husb
and for his pirates, too! And loans to these new arrivals..."
"That's just it, sir," Lewrie insisted. "Mind you, I dislike him as much as cold boiled mutton. But why, once one has that sort of 'blunt,' that sort of respectability, would one risk it all just to make more, if an honest profit atop his bank and his pickings from the war would buy him a small country in Europe? It doesn't make sense."
"Because he's a semi-illiterate dog who hasn't the sense t'not feed like a starvin' wolf 'til he spews!" Rodgers sneered.
"Captain Lewrie has a point, sir," Ballard interjected. "He's not a stupid man, for all his lack of public-school letters. Look at how far he rose, and what native intelligence it required."
"Aye, he could have been as dense as his mate Doyle, once he'd gotten a purse full of 'chink,' sir," Lewrie countered. "Risen, then fallen in a fortnight. But he didn't, sir."
"Revenge," Ballard commented slyly, his sober countenance, and his slightly sad-but-observant eyes crinkling with secret mirth.
"Oh, rot!" Rodgers snorted with disdain.
"Vengeful amusement," Lewrie added, sharing a smile with his first officer.
"Against who, pray tell?" Rodgers demanded.
"Why, against just about anyone and everyone, I'd expect, sir," Ballard intoned with a quirky cock of one brow. "Society at-large, which's ever sneered at him."
"Rot, I tell you," Rodgers reiterated. " 'Tis of no matter why. What does matter is gatherin' evidence. Among all this cargo, there must be some sign it came off foreign ships, that it wasn't ever his."
"How do you come by that, sir? Why foreign ships?" Alan asked.
"Even he'd not be so foolish as to loot a British ship," Commander Rodgers chuckled. "They'd be missed! But foreign ships, which compete with British merchantmen, and undercut every New Providence merchant, well, they're fair game, as long as they aren't carryin' a Bay Street shopkeeper's cargo! Those fellows'd turn a blind eye an' like as not stand the pirates a round o' drinks, if it's piracy keeps dieir prices high. Cuts down on Finney's competition, and lines his purse at the same time, too! We have no way of knowin' how many foreign-flagged ships set out, or when, whether they were comin' to the Bahamas, or just passin' by. How long would it be before some Boston ship's-husband sends a letter to inquire about a missin' ship? And, with just the one overworked American consul, it might take years to answer, if answered at all, an' the bulk of 'em put down as 'lost at sea, cause unknown,' with their home port so far off."
The Gun Ketch Page 25