Havoc`s Sword

'Mister Peel?' Lewrie said, turning to their resident spy.

'Ah, uhm,' Peel muttered, lifting a heavy borrowed telescope to his eye, trying to keep the schooner in the ocular, and focussed, with the frigate bounding and rolling beneath him. 'It is the challenge… to which we should reply…' He referred to a sheaf of papers.

'I have it, sir,' Lt. Adair insisted, quickly calling numbered flags to the sailors standing by the windward halliards. French flags were numbered differently, but the stolen private signals book had the coloured illustrations in order, to sort them out. On this day in the middle ten-day of the new-fangled French month, the proper reply was a five-flag hoist… Nine, Two, Eleven, Thirty, Repeater; which signal quickly soared aloft as high as the mizen-mast top, each bundled flag suddenly blossoming as the light binding twine was shaken out.

'That won't put them off, will it?' Lt. Langlie fretted. 'That we're miles more efficient than any Frog ship I've seen when it comes to breaking signals, sir? 'Stead of hanking them on and sending them up straight from the lockers, free to fly, and…'

'Hmmm,' Lewrie frowned, having not taken that into consideration 'til now. Inefficiency wasn't limited to French ships, though. He'd seen signalmen start a hoist with the first flag, let it flap near to the bulwarks as the next was attached, so the message crawled up, one item at a time. 'Mister Peel, what's a merchantman doing with naval private signals?' he asked, instead. 'Could she be a privateer?'

'Very possibly a privateer, or a captured merchant ship turned to naval use, Captain Lewrie,' Peel answered with an equal frown.

'Was she sloppy at her hoist, Mister Adair?' Lewrie demanded.

'A tad, sir, aye,' Lt. Adair agreed.

'Let's call her a privateer, then,' Lewrie decided, lifting his own telescope, ' 'til we know better. And assume she'll take us for a real Frog warship, with a martinet bastard for a captain, compared to their idle ways. Just so long as it gets us within close cannon shot before her captain figures it out. 'Bout two miles, now?'

'Just about, sir,' Mr. Winwood estimated aloud.

'More sails inshore, sir,' Midshipman Elwes pointed out. 'Wee single-masted fishermen, most-like.'

'Damme, she's making another hoist!' Lt. Adair groused, waving j his signalmen to haul their own quickly down. 'Mister Peel, may I ask your assistance? I speak French, but translating, and sorting out the flags, both…'

'Of course, Mister Adair,' Peel acquiesced, despite his opposition to the whole endeavour; as long as they were there, why not make every effort to pull it off?

'Bienvenu … 'from where bound,' she asks,' Adair called out. 'Damme… where are we from, sir?'

'Rochefort,' Lewrie quickly extemporised, 'we've cruised along the Carolinas with no luck, and are short of provisions. Got chased off by American frigates, tell him. Break it up into three hoists if you can… keep 'em gogglin' us. Mister Peel, what's a good name for a Frog frigate that's been unfortunate at taking prizes?'

'Uhm… L'Heureux … 'Fortunate,' sir,' Peel said, snapping his fingers as if inspired, and breaking his first impish grin of the last two days.

'Aha! Yes, make it so, Mister Adair. Quickly,' Lewrie bade.

'Aye, sir. Uhm, however d'ye spell that, Mister Peel?'

'And now, gentlemen,' Lewrie continued, turning to his assembled officers, 'let us beat to Quarters. Take your stations, and God help the French.'

Lt. Adair had to stay on the quarterdeck instead of going 'forward to supervise the forrud-most guns and foremast, in close cooperation with Mr. Peel and Midshipman Elwes to sort out the proper flags to convey their fictitious identity and recent past to the inquisitive schooner.

She a guarda-costa? Lewrie wondered, lifting his glass one more time. We're close enough, now… I can see semaphore towers, ashore, but they ain't wagging, yet. Waitin' for the schooner t'tell 'em who and what we are, are they? Well, just you keep on waitin ', damn you all. You'll know us soon enough!

'Ahem,' Mr. Winwood said at his side.

'Time to turn South along the coast, I take it, sir?' Lewrie asked with a faint grin, taking time to turn and look at him.

'Aye, Captain,' Winwood solemnly agreed with a slow nod.

'Very well, sir. Haul our wind and shape the new course.'

'Aye aye, sir.'

'She's hauling her wind, too, sir,' Lt. Adair announced. 'New hoist… damn, what does that mean?'

'Not for us, Mister Adair,' Lewrie snapped. 'Let it pass, this time. There's a semaphore station, halfway up yonder mountain that's working its arms. Can they not read our hoists, most-like they're asking the schooner to tell 'em what she's learned.'

As Proteus fell off the Trades to take the wind on her larboard quarter, the schooner angled out from the coast to close her, the gaffhung fore and main sails winged and bellied out as she wore across the wind and approached at a 45° angle, aiming as if to meet Proteus, bowsprit to bowsprit. The range dropped rapidly, as the frigate's crew settled down beside their great-guns, or knelt below the bulwarks with muskets. A keen-eyed observer might have noticed that Proteus had her gun-ports free to swing outboard a few inches with each roll, ready to be hauled up and out of the way the second that the order to fire was given. The larboard 12-pounders were ready- loaded and hauled up close to the bulwarks; a few last tugs on the tackles would jut their ' snouts into firing position. The flintlock strikers were, so far, uncocked but primed, with the firing lanyards already in the gun- captains' hands but held loosely.

The focs'le carronades, the quarterdeck carronades, were manned behind closed ports, only a few designated men allowed to appear above the bulwarks to slouch idle, prepared to wave until the trap was to be sprung. It was a rare French man o' war that fitted carronades so far in this war; the sight of them would have been a dead giveaway.

'Half mile?' Lewrie muttered from the side of his mouth.

'About that, aye, sir,' Lt. Langlie agreed, striving to appear casual and inoffensive as he paced about the quarterdeck.

Lewrie strode to the helm and took up a brass speaking-trumpet, then shambled back to the bulwarks, as if he had all the time in the world, wouldn't harm a flea, and had the most pacific intentions; just about ready to smile, wave widely, and 'speak' the Frog schooner. He held the speaking-trumpet high, in plain sight, and, as the range got shorter and shorter, he could see the schooner's captain standing with his own amplifying device by her starboard, lee, rails, waiting for the chance to 'speak' him, too.

Evidently, the semaphore station had been satisfied, for after a brief flurry of spinning telegraph arms, it had gone inert again. One quick scan of the windward horizon showed Lewrie that the fishing boats Were still casting their nets, the three-masted ship still stood out to sea a little beyond their bows, would pass to leeward about a mile off. Off the harbour town of Basse-Terre, the frigate's putative destination, Lewrie thought he could see another three-master with weary tan-stained sails, a ship he took for another merchantman standing out to sea. He got a glimpse of a larger three-master entering harbour, brailing up as she ghosted shoreward. Close to Basse- Terre was another schooner…

'Rounding off, sir!' Lt. Langlie cautioned. Sure enough, at a distance of no more than a British cable, the schooner had swung about to run alongside them.

' 'Allo, m'sieur!' the schooner's captain called with his brass trumpet to his lips. 'Ici L'Abeille, le navire de guerre auxiliare .. .'

'The Bee' Mr. Peel snickered as he came up to the windward to Lewrie's side, no matter naval custom against him being there unasked.

'… who just got stung!' Lewrie chortled. 'Run out and fire!'

Ports skreaked open to thud against the upper bulwarks; tackle sheaves squealed, and heavy carriage trucks rumbled like a stampede of cattle as the guns were run out the last few feet.

'False flags down)' Lewrie shouted; he'd made that mistake long ago when first as