"That would take a power of doing. And longer than either of us have on this earth, I expect," Alan answered.
"Well, that's the way of it, then," Sir Hugo harrumphed, and wiped a tear from the corner of one eye. "Just do one thing for me."
"What?"
"Don't end up like me, will you, lad?"
"I don't know; I have a fair start on it." Alan grimaced and found himself amused in spite of himself.
"You take after me when it comes to the ladies, hey?" Sir Hugo teased.
"In frequency, perhaps. Not… well, I haven't cheated anyone. Not yet, anyway," Alan allowed.
"That Captain Bevan dropped me a line now and then about you. I know about the ladies in Jamaica," Sir Hugo chuckled.
"That's not the half of it."
"1 thought I'd offer you a treat," Sir Hugo said, getting to his feet rather awkwardly. Part age and stiffness, Alan thought, and part being half-seas-over with drink. Sir Hugo clapped his hands and the narrow door in the purdah screen opened. Three girls entered the room, one dressed in a translucent saree, the other two in the bright gauzy skirts and tight satin jackets that left so little to the imagination, like the nautch-giils he'd seen in the bazaar earlier.
"My word!" he breathed. They were unutterably lovely, every one of 'em! Kohl outlined eyes, shy smiles and bright teeth, complexions clear and smooth, and as brown as pecan shells or as golden as wheat.
"This is Padmini," Sir Hugo said, indicating the one in the saree, who stood no higher than Alan's chin.
"Namaste, sahib," the girl whispered, though grinning with an impish expression.
"A Bengali, she is, Alan. Once you've had a Bengali woman, you're spoiled for anything else." Sir Hugo chuckled. "Draupadi. She's Rajput. And Apsara. Aptly named, too, for the playthings of Hindoo gods. Though I doubt she's Hindoo. From up north in the Oudh, I think. Maybe from the foothills. A little tigress. All can do a dance that'll set your blood to boiling. Like to see?"
"I don't know…" Alan sighed, feeling anything but lusty for once. All passion had been shouted or cried out of him. "Maybe some other time, sir."
Good Christ, is it me saying that?
"Too late to be wandering the streets, even in the English cantonments, Alan. If nothing else, accept my offer of bed and breakfast."
Draupadi was stirring slowly to the beat of the madals from the courtyard, smiling with heavy-lidded eyes full of promise, her extremely long, straight dark hair swishing maddeningly as far down as her fingertips, and Alan watched it sway. He transferred his gaze to Apsara, she of the dark, frizzy-curly hair and the golden wheat skin, who gazed at him with such a welcoming, open-mouthed smile.
"Er… hmmm," he pondered.
"Come, Alan," Sir Hugo demanded. "I know you of old, my dear son. What's worse, you know me. I'd never cut my nose off to spite my face. Nor would I turn down such exquisite quim just because I bore a grudge against my host. And I doubt if you would, either."
"Ah…" Alan tried to reply.
"I have a lot to make up to you for, Alan," his father said, coming close to his side to speak privately. "Maybe I never can, like you suspect. I'd buy you that bloody trap and pony, if I thought you still wanted it. But right now, this is the best I have to offer. And it may be your last chance before you sail off out of my life again. Safer than some bazaari-randi* too, and won't cost you tuppence."
*market-whores
"Hmmm," Alan speculated at last, "don't suppose your band knows 'When First I Gazed in Chloe's Eyes,' would they?"
"Hardly!" Sir Hugo barked out a short laugh.
"Ah, well," Alan finally allowed, sinking back to the carpet and reclining against one of those impossibly thick and round barrel-shaped pillows.
With a crook of his finger, Sir Hugo summoned Padmini to join him. Alan crooked his own finger at Apsara, who beamed even wider, and seemed to slink to his side with the lithe grace of a panther, her patchouli and sandalwood scent enveloping him like her gauze chudder as she drew the headcloth about their faces to share a brief nuzzle before pouring him another full bumper of wine.
"Apsara?" he said. "Alan."
"Ahk-lahn," she breathed, taking a sip of his wine.
"My God in Heaven." He laughed with an anticipatory shudder of raw lust. "Mind you, Father," he said over Apsara's smooth young shoulder, "you have one bloody Hell of a lot to make up for, y'know."
"The evening's young," Sir Hugo replied softly. "My son." And Draupadi began her dance, her ankle bangles jangling.
III
"Divitis Indiae usque ad ultimum sinum."
"To the farthest gulf of the rich East."
– TOWN MOTTO OF SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS
Chapter 1
Another watch with Percival, the second officer, Alan sighed as he mopped his brow. Another broiling forenoon on a deck holystoned to pristine whiteness that reflected back the heat of the sun, wondering if Percival ever felt the heat, ever grew faint and weak. Plenty of people drop dead of apoplexy back home, Alan thought; why not this bluff ginger bastard?
Bad as their relationship had been compared to the easy acceptance he'd gained with the others in the wardroom, it had gotten a lot worse after the durbar at Sir Hugo's house, to which even Choate the first officer had not been invited, and Alan had. Lewrie suspected Percival despised him in the beginning for rising so quickly in the Navy, and now most heartily despised him for being in the know, for being privy to secrets. For seeming so well-connected with the people who matter, here in the Far East, and back home with the Admiralty.
Yesterday's noon sights placed them exactly on the Equator, almost even with the Johore Straits, the normal passage, and by this noon, they would have made fifty leagues to the north farther on, even with fitful winds staggered almost to nothing by the heat at the Equator.
With such a late start from Calcutta, they'd be lucky to make Canton or Macao by the start of the trading season. If they arrived too late, there might not be a member of the Co Hong who would agree to be their compradore in their legal trading. Mr. Wythy had worried there would be so many other ships anchored off Whampoa full of cotton and spices that the value of their goods, arriving so late, would not fetch a price good enough to defray expenses.
All of which made Lewrie wonder once more if this whole thing hadn't been dreamed up, this tale of piracy, to bilk the Foreign Office and the Admiralty out of a free ship and cheap goods to make Twigg and Wythy rich. If they cut up a pirate fleet or two in the process, it would make a grand report back home, but who couldn 't find some pirates to bash out here, he wondered? It's not as if one had to go looking for them very hard. The whole ocean teemed with them like lice in a rented bed back home. Mr. Brainard the sailing master was an old China hand, along with Twigg and Wythy, in the "country trade" for years. Even Captain Ayscough had sailed in Asian waters in the last war. On the surface, it would make sense to hire their services on, but they all might be in combination to make a pile of money. Of course, Alan Lewrie had always been a suspicious and somewhat cynical observer of his fellow man. If the whole thing was so much twaddle, he hoped there would be some profit for others out of the venture. Such as himself.
"Sail ho!" the main-mast lookout hailed. "Fine on the starboard bows!"
"A little off the beaten track, surely," Alan commented. "Most merchantmen would be farther west nearer the Malay coast, I'd think."
"Say 'sir' " Percival demanded softly.
"Aye aye, sir," Alan picked back with a bright smile.
"Two sail! Both fine on the starboard bows!" the lookout added.
"Boy, run and inform the captain," Alan told one of the ship's boys.
"My decision to make, Mister Lewrie," Percival huffed. "I am senior officer in this watch, and I'll thank you to remember that."
"Aye, sir."
"Go aloft, Mister Lewrie. Report what you see. I want an experienced pair of eyes in the cross-trees," Percival snickered.
"Aye aye, sir," Alan was forced to reply, much as he hat
ed scaling the masts. He'd done enough of it as a midshipman, and had been damned glad to make his lieutenancy, which at least let him stay firmly rooted to a safe and solid deck most of the time. But he slung a heavy day-glass over his shoulder like a sporting gun, went to the windward shrouds and scampered up the ratlines. Out over the futtock shrouds that inclined outward to anchor the maintop platform and the deadeyes and shrouds that held the topmast erect, hanging by fingers and toes briefly. Then up the narrower set of stays to the cross-trees where the lookout perched on slender bracing slats of wood a fat pigeon would have cast a wary eye upon.
"Where away, Hodge?" Alan asked the grizzled older man. "Three sail, now, Mister Lewrie," the sailor replied, pointing forward. He cupped his work-worn hands round his eyes to shut out the blinding sun. "An' I ain't so sure they ain't sum-mat up t'larboard as well, sir. Jus' a cloud, mebbe, sir."
"Cloud, Hell," Alan puffed, trying to steady his shaking limbs to hold his telescope after that grueling climb. "Four sail to starboard, and perhaps two to larboard. Tell Mister Percival. You've better lungs than I."
While Hodge bawled his report down to the deck, Alan studied the view. They were passing between a sprinkling of small islands and islets between two larger land masses- Anambas to the west of their course, and a larger island of Natuna to the east'rd. There was a safe channel of at least one hundred miles width, but littered with these reefs and islets. Perfect lurking grounds for Malay or Borneo pirates, he thought. They'd try to catch ships passing to the west of Anambas after using the Johore Strait. 'Course, they could be fishermen, Alan thought.
But, as they drew closer, hull-up over the horizon, Alan could see they were using the barest and crudest of sail rigs, and the froth about them was not a wake, but the working of many oars and paddles, far more oarsmen than any fisherman would take to sea. The hulls were blood red, winking with what he took to be gilt trim.
"Hodge, inform the deck I believe they're pirates." Alan stepped out of the cross-trees, took hold of a backstay and wrapped his legs about it to let himself down to the quarterdeck hand over hand in seamanly fashion.
"Half a dozen to starboard, three, possibly four to larboard, sir," Alan told the captain. "Red hulls. Lots of paddlers or oarsmen."
"War praos" Ayscough nodded grimly. "Mister Brainard?" "Aye, sir?"
"Any hopes the wind will pick up?" "No, sir," the sailing master informed him. "Not with this heat, not this far easterly of the usual track. We've everything cracked on now but the stun'sl booms, and not a fraction above seven knots do we make."
"I see," Captain Ayscough grunted. "Then if we can't outrun 'em, we'll have to fight. Mister Choate, beat to Quarters!"
"What is it, Alan?" Burgess Chiswick asked as he came on deck, drawn by the drumming and fifing of the ship's small band. His lean, dark sepoys were struggling into their red coats below them on the gun deck, just below the quarterdeck nettings.
"Pirates, Burgess. Maybe the ones we've been searching for."
"Subadar!" Burgess bawled, shouting for his senior native officer and clattering down to the gun deck.
Telesto mounted a light battery of two twelve-pounders forward on the fo'c'sle as chase-guns, and another two right aft in the wardroom, one to either side of the rudder and transom post to deal with ships attempting to rake her from astern. There were six more twelve-pounders on the quarterdeck, three to each beam. Each gun took a crew of seven men to operate it efficiently in Naval usage, with a ship's boy serving as powder-monkey to fetch and carry from the magazines for each one.
Her main battery was on the upper gun deck; twenty eighteen-pounders which required nine men apiece. Even in the Royal Navy, both sides could not be fully manned at the same time, so there were only eleven men per gun to share between, which would require some nimble hopping back and forth if the pirates attacked from both sides at once: three men to load and charge each gun, and the rest milling about in the center of the gun deck to haul on the tackles to run the guns out and throw their weight on hand-spikes and crows to shift aim right or left while the gun-captain would adjust the elevation of the guns with the new rotating screws. All were, mercifully, equipped with flintlock igniters like a musket, instead of the older types that required a tin or goose-feather quill priming tube and a slow-match fire.
It was on the lower gun deck, though, that Telesto hid her heaviest punch. Roughly amidships, behind what seemed to be unused gunports that had been expanded in size for ventilation in harbor or ease of cargo-handling, she had a battery of thirty two-pounder carronades. These were light, short-barreled guns that could be handled by only two men per gun. They threw a massive six-and-two-thirds-inch shot, not for much over two cables, or thirteen hundred feet, but when that solid shot hit at lower velocity than the conventional guns above them on the upper deck, they ravaged whatever they struck. They were mounted on slides, with a greased block of elm between two wooden rails, with an iron roller to handle the lighter recoil, and they could pivot on a large iron wheel much farther forward or aft than a gun on a wheeled truck, and had a much higher rate of fire than anything but a light swivel gun.
As junior officer, that was Alan's station; the carronades were his charge. He thundered down to the lower gun deck, passed down the narrow passageway between bales and crates of cargo, into the secret section amidships that held his battery. Four guns to each side.
"Tompions out," he ordered, tossing his hat to one side. "About ten native pirate ships. Stand ready to engage on either beam. Let's keep the gunports shut until they're close enough in to scare the bejeesus out of 'em."
"Aye, sir."
"Charge your guns!" Serge bags of mealed gunpowder came up from the magazine on the orlop and were handed over by the powder-monkeys to the gun-captains, who inspected them for dampness, weight and rips or tears. Then they were handed off to the loader, who inserted them into the short, wide-mouthed barrels. The guns had been run back to the last extent of their recoil slides so a flexible rope rammer with a wooden head could push the charges down to the base of the gun with a hard shove.
"Shot your guns!" Both men heaved up solid iron balls from the shot garlands made of arm-thick hoops of discarded anchor cable.
With a little elevation screwed in already, the balls rolled down to thump against the powder bags easily, requiring a lighter shove with the rammers to seat them firm. To cut down on too much of the charge escaping past the windage difference of ball and muzzle, thick hairy patches of raveled rope were soaked in the fire-buckets and rammed down atop the balls.
"Prime your guns."
Cartridges were pricked with the sharp end of a linstock. A measure of powder from a flask hanging from around the gun-captain's neck was dribbled into the touch-holes and pans of the flintlock mechanisms, now pulled back to half-cock. The frizzens over the pans were shut.
"Stand easy," Lewrie ordered. He wished they could open the ports. If the deck had been a roasting pan, then below decks was an oven, and the aroma of crate after crate of opium, balls of it as big as a man's head, was making him a trifle dizzy. The hatchway over his head was rigged with a grating, that grating covered with a tarred sheet of sailcloth, so there was no hope for any air.
The gun crews swayed to the easy motion of the ship, sweat running down their bodies in buckets. Shirts cast off, loose-legged slop-trousers rolled up to the knee, legs and feet bare, with only their kerchiefs above the waist, now tied 'round their heads to save their hearing once the guns began to sing.
"Stand by, the forrud chase guns!" a voice bellowed. And above the sound of the ship as she worked and groaned, they could hear drumming. Not the jerky, uplifting drumming of the ship's bandsmen, but a steady, monotonous boom-boom, boom-boom.
"Reckon 'at'll be th' slave-drivers, sir," the senior quarter-gunner speculated as he shifted a large cud of tobacco in his mouth. "Keep t' pace fer th' oars."
"Saints praysairve us!" an Irish loader whispered, crossing himself, and fingering a tiny silver crucifix 'round h
is neck.
"And good artillery preserve us, Hoolahan," Alan said with a brief grin. "Good artillery and sharp-eyed gunners."
A twelve-pounder barked from the starboard battery, then the lower gun deck drummed and echoed as the upper deck ports were drawn up and out of the way, and ten eighteen-pounders rumbled across the oak decks on their little wheels and ungreased axles loud as a cattle stampede. Alan crossed to the starboard side to peer out a slit-drain in one of the gun-ports. "About eight cables off now, half a dozen of them. I can see…"
He was interrupted by the blast of the forward-most eighteen-pounder as it lit off, followed in stately, controlled progression by the rest of the starboard battery. Telesto groaned and rocked, gun-carriages squealed as they ran in to the limit of the breeching ropes with the recoil. "Oh, good shooting! The leader's been hit hard. Dismasted. Lot of oars smashed, too."
As he watched, a gun in the bow of the prao returned fire, a large brass gun overly adorned with the scales, mouth and dorsal fin of a dragon. For such a large burst of smoke, the shot fell short, throwing up a huge gout of water in a tall feather of spray.
"Stone shot, sir," the quarter-gunner said. "Bad powder."
"Wind's dying," Alan whispered, and shared a worried look with the man. The ocean was flatter, hardly ruffled by wind, heaving slow and steady, almost glassy-calm farther off toward the horizon. "Do you know how to whistle, Owen?"
"I'll get on it directly, Mister Lewrie, sir."
Telesto sagged a little, heaved and rolled more gently, a sure sign that the wind was failing them, and that they would be becalmed at the worst moment in the middle of a fleet of pirate vessels that could row circles around them. It was an ancient belief that whistling aboard ship brought more wind than any seaman could handle. At that moment, Alan would have settled for a Good Hope gale.
The hatch grating over their heads was drawn back and cast aside, and Hogue, the master's mate, stuck his head down to yell at them. "Mister Lewrie, you're to try your eye once they're in your range. Both sides at once, if you please, sir!"
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