'Deck, there! Near ship's hoisted colours… American!'
'Excellent!' Lewrie chortled. 'Now, Mister Elwes, hoist away! And make what ye will o' that, Monsoor Frog.'
The signals soared aloft and broke out in a string of nine code flags. The 'convoy' was drawing closer, the nearest almost hull-up to Proteus, so there was no way they could not reply to them. But Lewrie had to pace about and stew for what felt like five minutes before that lone 'escort' whipped off an answer.
'Well?' Lewrie demanded of Mr. Elwes, who was frantically flipping through his signals book.
'Can't make it out, sir,' Elwes fretted. ' 'Tis nothing current, not in the past six months' codes, at least. She shows a private number
for the USS Pickering, but Pickering is a Revenue Service cutter, and she hoisted her private number and the reply to our challenge out of proper sequence, sir.'
'Then she's lyin' through her teeth,' Lewrie gladly concluded, clapping his hands in glee. 'Make to her the usual jibber-jaw, 'where bound' and such. Hah! Ask her if she's seen USS Sumter! That'll be int'resting. And on the starb'rd halliards, Mister Elwes, where she can't read 'em… hoist Hancock's number, followed by 'With All Despatch' and 'Enemy In Sight.' '
'American,' Choundas muttered, sullenly fuming at this sudden and disturbing revelation. 'American, of all things. Signal the rest of the ships to hoist American flags, Griot. We will bluff her.'
'Oui, m'sieur, but… she hoists another set of signals. How do we answer them?' Griot asked him, striving to maintain the required sangfroid, but revealing his worry anyway. 'She names herself in new codes that we do not possess. We were fortunate I had an out-of-date copy in my desk, but… is she a merchantman, or a man-of-war, we do not know until she closes us.'
'Two corvettes and a well-armed schooner against a single brig of war, Griot?' Choundas scathingly sneered. 'Merchant or warship, in another hour it will not matter, for she'll be our prize. We do know the code flag for 'Repeat.' Angled as she is on the Trades, her flags are difficult to read. She must come closer, fall a bit astern of us, or press a bit ahead, to make them readable. Close enough for you to sortie out and take her under fire, quickly re-enforced by La Resolue and Hainaut's schooner. Tell them we lost the latest signals book in a hard blow, and must fall back on the old one. Surely, they have it, still, and will accommodate a… fellow countryman.' He chuckled.
'Ohe/' the main-mast lookout shouted. 'Ships ahoy! Two… no, three ships to the starboard beam, astern of the nearest one! Three sets of topsails, top-gallants, and royals… headed North-West!'
'Merde, that close?' Griot griped, dashing back to the bulwarks with his telescope extended once more. 'This near one must have masked them, if we see topsails, already. They could be up to us in another hour or so. Mort de ma vie, m'sieur. What if they are warships?'
'And what if they are a whole convoy?' Choundas barked back, in sudden loathing for the usually stoic Griot's uncharacteristic 'windiness.' And he'd thought him a Breton paragon, all this time, a worthy scion of the ancient Veneti, courageous as himself!
'They're almost hull-up to us, from the deck, sir,' Lt. Langlie announced. 'Six miles, perhaps? And our Yankee 'cousins' are closing us rapidly,' he said, swivelling about for a peek aft.
'We'll be close-aboard the French in half an hour on this wind,' the Sailing Master, Mr. Winwood, soberly opined. 'And the Americans, so I do adjudge, will be up to broadsides a half hour after that,
s? sir.
'Mmhmm,' Lewrie absently acknowledged them, all ascheme, and a bit too impatient to create a little inventive mischief and mayhem to wait that long. The strung-out convoy arrayed in-line-ahead was split in equal halves by Proteus's bisecting bowsprit. They could haul up harder on the wind and cut them off, they could wear once more and duck astern of them, go dashing for the lee-side and the vulnerably slow escorted ships… which?
Didn't plan on it, but I've led the Yankees to a fight, Lewrie pondered; / commit to battle, and Goodell'd never forgive me for wadin' in before he could get up, and there goes his grudgin' gratitude, and any chance o' future cooperation. Two corvettes, mayhap the schooner is an armed auxiliary, too, hmm… discretion the better part o ' valour, for once? Use my bloody head, for a rare once?
'Mister Langlie,' Lewrie finally said, turning to face his execcutive officer. 'We will bear up hard on the wind. New course… Nor-Nor-west. Mister Grace, you still with us? Once we're settled on our new heading, you will lower the Yankee flag and break out our true colours. Smartly. And make a hoist to the convoy to heave to and prepare to be boarded, that same instant.' To Langlie, he gleefully explained, 'we'll sit out here off their starboard bows and let 'em sulk on things for a bit. Pull their hair and kick furniture, if they've a mind. They wish to come out and fight, we'll be more than happy to oblige 'em. Give the Americans the chance to participate, if they dally long enough, too.'
'Ohe!' the lookout screamed, a minute after the 'brig of war,' or the 'merchant brig,' had worn about, revealing herself as a three-masted ship. 'She is anglais!' Choundas ground his teeth, despising the shouts, and the man who made them. 'Mille diables, she is a frigate!' he wailed, spreading consternation by reporting so emotionally. 'Damn it!' Choundas rasped, stamping his cane on the deck.
'Ohe! She is that devil ship Proteus!' the lookout howled.
'Shoot that dog!' Choundas barked. 'Do you not train your men to report correctly, Griot?'
'M'sieur, I…' Griot stammered, as flustered as his sailors at the sight of their nemesis. 'How? How did he find us? Who could have betrayed our sailing, after all you did to stamp out traitors?'
'You are French, Griot! You are Breton!' Choundas bellowed in rage, his face gone the colour of red plums. 'Behave accordingly, as a warship captain, or…!'
'Ohe, the deck!' the lookout shrilled once more, 'the ships to the East are warships! Flags at every mast-head! A corvette, a brig of war, and… perhaps a small frigate, astern!'
'Damn that man!' Choundas spat, glaring upward as if his look could kill. 'Lewrie is not a devil, Griot, he's but a man. A stupid, idle, arrogant British… amateur! He sits out there from fear, waiting for the Americans to come up before he acts. Americans! Revenue cutters armed with pop-guns, thin-sided merchant ships turned into poor substitutes for men of war! We sortie now against him, and we'll have nearly an hour to swarm over him. Three ships to one, and with him taken or crippled… Lewrie dead, at last, yes!… they'll stand off in fear of us! Oh, Lewrie dead at long last…'
'Proteus is a Fifth Rate frigate of thirty-two guns, Capitaine' Griot recited, suddenly so calm that Choundas got a crick in his neck from turning his head to glare at him. 'Her main artillery consists of twelve-pounders. Her weight of metal is greater than ours, together.'
'Get those damnable rags down, Griot,' Choundas coldly ordered. 'Hoist our glorious Tricolore, and signal La Resolue and La Mohican to form line-of-battle on us. We will fight, and… we… will… conquer, do you hear me, hein? Do it! Vite, vite!'
'And our charges, m'sieur?' Capt. Griot asked. 'What should we do with them?'
'Order the convoy to wear about and make the best of their way back to Guadeloupe, Griot,' Choundas quickly decided. 'If they cannot drive that close to the Trades, they must run East-Sou'east, at least, until we come to
