Havoc`s Sword

and arrest Hainaut, put him to 'the question' to sear the truth from him, then turn him over to the gendarmes for trial, and a sure and certain execution under the blade of the merciless Victor Hugues's 'Monsieur Guillotine.'

And if blameless, well… Hainaut would get his seasoning for future duty to France as a naval officer, his fondest wish. Choundas thought to watch his reactions for carefully hidden upset, or too much joy. No, he'd dissemble, pretend to be glad but not too glad, sham sadness to be leaving Choundas's side, perhaps even pipe his eyes with 'loss' at leaving the service of such a fine master… pah!

It would prove nothing, Choundas suspected; he was too 'fly.'

There were blank lines opposite the positions of the schooner, now renamed La Vigilante. Choundas dipped the steel nib of his pen in the inkwell, paused over the lines. Dieuxieme, or Troisieme, Second or

Third officer?

'A real reward,' Choundas whispered, his fiendish face even uglier as he smiled so widely, as he clumsily wrote Hainaut's name on the line for Second Officer. Written with his left hand, the name was almost illegible even to him. But Choundas was sure that his mousy and harassed little clerk Etienne de Gougne would be able to decypher it when he made the fair copies in his copper-plate hand.

And gloat with studiously hidden glee to be rid of his tormentor!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The two warships sailed together, clawing out their offing from Antigua to the East- Sou'east, and close-hauled to windward on the larboard tack. Though HMS Proteus had been quicker off the mark to seize the windward advantage, smothering the USS Thomas Sumter in her lee by her spread of sail, the American ship had still surged up almost abeam of her by late afternoon as the day's heat faded, as the airs borne by the Trade wind grew denser.

'Fresher from the careenage, I expect, sir,' Mr. Winwood said as the reason, 'with a cleaner bottom.'

'Equal our waterline length, Captain,' Lt. Langlie supposed as well, 'so it stands to reason that both hulls perform equally. Perhaps a touch finer in her entry than ours, but…'

'No better handled,' Lt. Catterall said with a dismissive sniff.

'Longer yards, with larger courses, surely,' Lt. Adair dared to comment as they watched the Sumter bowl along, barely half a mile alee, 'especially 'pon her t'gallants and royals. Fuller-bellied jibs… '

'Mmhmm,' Lewrie replied to their guesses, telescope to one eye for the last ten minutes, entire, intent upon his study of her.

'Converted from a merchantman, she's fuller in her beam, too,' Lt. Langlie pondered aloud, 'so perhaps she sits more upright than we, just a few degrees stiffer, and sailing on a flatter bottom, with a pronounced shoulder… not as rounded as our chines, sir?'

'Mmhmm,' Lewrie said again, and that only because he sensed the pregnant pause in their musings that required a response on his part.

'Merchantman or no, she's a swift sailer, I'll grant them,' Mr. Winwood admitted with a hint of grumbling over any vessel that could rival a British-built, British-masted, and British-rigged ship, one set up to suit his experiences, and his captain's.

'Aye, swift,' Lewrie mumbled. His arms tiring at last, he let the barrel of the strongest day-glass rest on the lee bulwarks of the quarterdeck for a bit. He peered about to windward, then aloft to the commissioning pendant's stiff-driven coach-whip, to the clouds on the horizon in search of dirty weather. There was none. The pendant was fully horizontal, its swallow-tail tip fluttering in concert with the lee edges of the jibs and courses. Even with the larboard battery run out and the starboard run in, Proteus was just a pinch slower than the Yankee man o' war, perhaps by as much as a quarter of a knot, and the cleanliness of her quickwork could not explain it. Americans simply built faster ships, Lewrie decided; just like the French did. Proteus had been based on a British interpretation of a captured French frigate whose lines had been taken off and copied, but… perhaps not copied closely enough.

'Puts me in mind of something from the Beatitudes, hey, Mister Winwood?' Lewrie asked the Sailing Master. 'How does it go? That the 'first shall be last, and the last shall be first'? No matter if they out-foot us or point a degree or two more to windward, really. Proteus was made to dominate, not sprint… stay the course in all weathers, keep the seas, and then hammer the swifter when we finally corner 'em.'

'Or simply chase 'em off, sir,' Lt. Catterall said with a grunt of agreement. 'Make 'em out-run us, in fear.'

'Well said, sir,' Lewrie told him with a brief grin, which drew growls of like sentiment from the rest as he turned back to leeward to raise his telescope once again, bracing the tube on the rat-lines of the mizen stays this time. He sobered quickly, though, dropping back into a brown study usually foreign to his nature, or his officers' experience with him. His statement had been his first utterance in the Past hour, other than a curt directive or two to improve their ship's handling. And, intent upon Sumter once more, he gave all indications of ignoring anything they said.

Lewrie was not studying Sumter in search of a weakness that he could use to keep Proteus ahead, though. In fact, the idea of sailing her hull-under was the last thing he wished to do, no matter how competitive he would usually act to maintain the honour of the Royal Navy, his ship, or his crew. He was not, in truth, peering so intently upon Sumter as he was keeping an eye on one of her midshipmen… his son.

His bastard son… who was at that moment perched aloft high in the Sumter?, main weather stays, just below her futtock shrouds, with a glass in his hands, too, which he lifted every now and again to caution his captain-uncle to Proteus'?, next race strategem. Two other boys of Sumter's cockpit were perched with him, all three hooting and cheering as the American armed ship gradually gained a few more yards on Proteus. They'd wave their tricorne hats and whoop and halloo, teeth-bared, and mouths open in perfect O's, like a pantomime's show against the thunder of the winds. They'd lean far out, with only a finger and a shoe heel gripping the rat-lines and stays, daring each other to greater follies of 'tarry' derring-do, and each time Midshipman Desmond McGilliveray matched or bettered their feats, Lewrie sucked in his breath as if to shout and warn them to 'belay all that.' He could see a grizzled bosun atop the bulwarks at the base of the stays, fist shaking and mouth open to bawl caution at them, but with boys that age, what he shouted most-like went in one ear and out the other, and Lewrie still felt twinges of worry. A. father's worry.

Desmond lifted his glass, lowered it, then waved wide, beaming, looking directly into the lens of the powerful day-glass, as if he knew he was being watched so closely. He raised his glass again and Lewrie lowered his, knowing he was being eyed, and pantomimed a solid grip on the stays with both hands, and was much relieved to see the lad seem to obey, and loop an arm and a shin inside the rat-lines, round a rigid stay. Lewrie made a large gesture of swabbing a coat sleeve over a 'worried' brow. 'Don't do that!' he silently mouthed over the water.

'Boat ahoy!' Midshipman Larkin had challenged two days following that drunken supper, and the youthful voice shouting in reply had drawn Lewrie to the deck. The turn-out for a foreign midshipman was as thin as charity, so it was Larkin who led Mr. Midshipman McGilliveray to the quarterdeck from the entry-port with his sealed letter for Proteus's captain… who met them personally.

'Captain McGilliveray's sincerest respects to you, sir, and I'm charged to deliver to you this message, Captain Lewrie, sir,' the lad had crisply stated, doffing his hat and making a courtly 'leg' worthy of an English 'mid' reporting to an Admiral-though no English 'mid' would ever peer so intently or so openly. And perhaps only a famous man such as Jervis or Nelson would elicit such an awe-struck expression as Midshipman McGilliveray