A King`s Commander - Dewey Lambdin

Down came her lateen yards, collapsing those triangular ellipses to her decks, and Jester fetched-to once more. The jolly boat was led around to the entry port by its towline, and Midshipman Spendlove, with Quartermaster Spenser and six seamen, rowed over to take charge of her; the jolly boat hauled back to Jester afterward for further use.

"Hardly seems worth the effort, Captain," Lieutenant Knolles remarked, laughing in scornful appraisal. "A dowdy old tub, she is."

"Well, let's hope she's a decent cargo aboard, to pay for our efforts, Mister Knolles." Lewrie shrugged. "Mains! haul, and let's be going."

Now their problem was that of a single staghound that had come across an entire herd of deer-which to pursue next. The nearest to them was running due west by then, about two miles off. The other two poleacres had fallen off the wind to east-sou'east, were closer together, but had at least another mile lead on Jester before she got back to full speed of nearly eleven knots.

"Mister Buchanon?" Lewrie called to his sailing master.

"Aye, sir?"

"Those two masters yonder know something we don't, sir? Current around the east'rd of Corsica?" Lewrie inquired. "Seems silly, to run east-sou'east, closer to the Bastia peninsula."

"North-set current, Cap'um, aye," Buchanon agreed, pointing to a chart. "Runs up past Cape Corse, 'tween 'ere an' th' Isle of Capraia… an' in shallower water, too. Nought t'dread, 'tis deep enough even for a 1st Rate, but… do they get into its… fan, I s'pose, an' with this southerly wind, 'ey'll fly like a pair o' pigeons. One an' a half, mayhap two knots, more, 'ey'd gain."

"If they may weather Cape Corse!" Lewrie intuited, at once. The poleacres had run far enough south, within forty or so miles of Corsica, that flight in that direction could come to an end, hemmed in by bluffs and shoals. If they stayed somewhat on the wind, as they still were.

"Sir, starboard Chase is altering course!" Knolles cried out to warn them.

Inexplicably, the nearest poleacre had come about to the starboard tack, as if suicidally intent upon making Calvi, after all, and arriving in late afternoon-broad daylight! Even as close-hauled as she lay to the eyes of the wind, she'd cross ahead of Jester's present course. Or, their courses would meet, like the two upright legs of a triangle, and Jester, of course, would shoot her to rags, and then take her.

"Mister Knolles, ready about! Stations for Stays!" Lewrie said with a wry smile. "We'll come to starboard tack. Make our new course east by south."

"Aye aye, sir," Knolles replied automatically, though sounding quizzical. "Mister Porter, pipe hands to Stations for Stays. Ready to come about!"

"Only a purblind fool'd come about like 'at, Cap'um," Buchanon opined. "Meanin' her, yonder, sir, d'ye understand, no disrespect…"

"My thoughts, exactly, Mister Buchanon," Lewrie agreed with a soft laugh. "Remind you of a mother goose, leading the stoat away from her hatchlings?"

"Flaggin' th' broken wing, aye, Cap'um."

"That pair to the east'rd, they're hoping to get away. This'un might be their leader. A merchant poleacre, yes. But perhaps carrying a French naval officer aboard. As short of ships as they are, it might even be a well-armed poleacre, servin' as escort. It'd be a criminal waste to send these poor vessels out to resupply Calvi without at least one warship. I'll wager that pair has the valuable cargo."

"Ready about, sir," Knolles reported.

"Very well, Mister Knolles. Tack the ship about."

Half an hour on starboard tack, floating almost without visible effort, now, across the seas, on a close reach with the winds nearly on her beam-Striding closer and closer to those two poleacres, who were forced by her presence, and the threat of the so-far unseen Cape Corse to haul their wind even farther, steer due east to try and heat Jester to that underwater river of current that would speed them back up north to the French Riviera coast, where they'd come from.

"Sail Ho!" came a cry from the foremast lookout, Rushing. "Two point off th' starb'rd bows!"

Lewrie twitched, almost began a quick dash to the shrouds to take a peek for himself, but checked his motion. It looked like an upright stumble, which made him blush in chagrin; chiding himself for appearing to start at the slightest omen, like a goose-girl!

"Two points to weather, that'd be…" he said, instead, stalking to the chart, trying to seem deliberate, this time. "Down near the Cape, 1 believe, Mister Buchanon?"

"Aye, sir. Inshore o' Cape Corse, west o' it, do we see her with her royals'r t'gallants 'bove th' horizon," Buchanon agreed.

"Show me the Frog; with any sense at all, who'd venture into San Fiorenzo Bay or its approaches by herself." Lewrie frowned. "Surely, tins new-come's bound to be one of ours."

"Oh, bad luck, sir," Knolles groaned. "Another man o' war to go shares with, should we take these last two."

"Well, they haven't a hope of our bilander, the tartane, or our dhow, at any rate, Mister Knolles. They weren't in sight when we took those!" Lewrie said, striving for a less than greedy pose, himself. "There is that, sir." Knolles shrugged.

"Signal, sir!" Rushing shouted down to them from far forward. "White Ensign to the mmnmast truck! Number pennants! Four… Six… Repeater!… Nine… Fifteen, sir!"

With both midshipmen, who normally were in charge of the signal nag lockers, away on prizes, it fell to Lewrie himself to delve into the binnacle cabinet drawers for the latest code combinations.

"Ah, hum… right, then," he concluded, after a long moments fumbling over a loose sheaf of wrinkled papers that threatened to go overside with the wind. "This month's recognition code, to the tee, gentlemen. She's one of ours. Mister Knolles? Do you have the White Ensign hoisted to the mainmast truck, and reply… uhm… Fifteen… Twenty-Two… Three… Repeater… Four. Got that?"

"Aye aye, sir," Knolles called back, snapping his fingers at a man of the after-guard, one of those literate "strikers" who assisted on the taffrails as a signalman.

Barely had that been bent on and hoisted high on the weather side of the mizzenmast, where it could be more easily read, than the newly arrived ship up to the sou'east hauled down her original hoist, and up went another one identifying her. Then a third; this one, orders.

"Pursue… Chase… More closely…" Lewrie translated, as the numerals were read off to him. Feeling like a half-wit midshipman all over again, at how long it was taking him, compared to the fluency of his inferiors. And with every eye on the quarterdeck upon him, too! "To Loo'rd!" he completed, puffing out his cheeks in frustration.

Well, o' course, he thought with a silent grunt; that recognition code had told him that the other ship was a 6th-Rate frigate, HMS Ariadne, twenty guns. A proper, post-captain's command, a man senior to him. Two guns, all the diff rence in the world! Alan griped. She wished Jester to haul her wind, sail a touch north of due east, cutting off any hopes the poleacres might have of simply turning and running to the north… or of gaining their saving current before Ariadne had come to grips with them.

"Haul our wind, Mister Knolles," Lewrie snapped. "Give us two points free, to east by north. And, topmen aloft, to set royals."

"Aye, sir."

Ariadne, Alan sighed; a brand-spanking new ship of war! My old 'un must've sunk at her moorings in English Harbor, at last. His very first ship had been HMS Ariadne, then a tired and worn old sixty-four-gunner of the 3rd Rate. Condemned after his very first action in the West Indies, too, for "hogging" at bow and stern, her back most likely broken, she'd become a guard ship, receiving ship, later just a useless hulk without a single gun, stripped down aloft to her fighting tops and gant lines.

Captain cashiered for her loss, first lieutenant court-martialed with him; fourth and fifth killed, third lieutenant convicted of cowardice… oh, she'd been a miserable old hag, even before then, and a terrible place for a seventeen-year-old to begin a naval career. Autumn of 1780, it was…

Damme, I'm gettin' bloody ancient] he thought.

He took a deep breath, clapped his hands together, and paced to the lee bulwarks with a telescope, to shrug off just how far back, in the antedeluvian age, he'd really gotten his "ha'porth of tar"!

There was their bilander, pacing along about ESE, four or five miles alee and off the larboard quarter. Nearer in to them was their tartane, only a mile astern, but three miles alee. And Spendlove and his dhow- or whatever else one might call it!-was, of course, the poor third, behind them all, even though she'd been the last, nearest, taken. A clumsy, udder-swinging old cow to begin with, and now directed by English tars, who'd never even clapped eyes on her like, before, much less tried to handle her lateen rig to best efficiency.

And the poleacre that had tried to decoy them away from her two consorts was…

"Christ, shat on a biscuit!"

She'd hauled her wind, worn about to run with the wind large on her starboard quarter, and was not three miles astern of Jester at that very moment, crossing from starboard to larboard quarter. Steering on what he took to be a course of nor'east by east. The bugger was after the prize vessels, bold as a dog in a doublet!

"Mister Knolles, new course… nor'east!" Lewrie shouted. "And bend on a signal to our prizes… Make All Sail. And add 'Imperative' to that! Uhm… they are to…"

What the Devil was the clearest signal, he fumed, running through a combination of orders. Damme, yes! "Order them to 'Take Station to Weather' of us!"

Half-past ten o'clock of the Forenoon Watch, by then, the winds beginning to abate, beaten into sullen submission by the oppressive and sultry heat of a Mediterranean July. Last summer around Toulon had been a coolish fluke of nature, all that rain and nippish cold. Here in the Ligurian Sea, summer winds were fickle, at best, a morning's gale blown out and hammered to compass-boxing zephyrs by midday. Just what they needed least, Lewrie thought. And hellish bad timin', too!

"Deck, there!" Rushing called from the foremast. "Ariadne is sending… 'Interrogative'!"

"Almost polite of him, consid'rin'," Lewrie said with a grimace. What that full-of-ginger post-captain yonder had really asked was, "Just what the Devil you think you're playing at, you damn' fool!"

He raised his telescope once more to study his laboring prize ships. Yes, they'd begun to make more sail, to alter course harder on the wind to get closer to Jester's protective artillery. Even Mister Spendlove's weary old dhow-thing-gummy had sprouted a mustache of foam under her bows. Not much of one, admittedly, but it was there. Lash the fore-ends of the lateen yards low to the center of the decks, and haul them fore-and-aft by brute force, though… she simply must sail better to windward, like a gaff-rigged cutter or sloop.

"Sir?" Knolles prompted at his elbow, his voice soft and confidential. "What reply do we send Ariadne?"