Havoc`s Sword

spread of canvas, and her impressive length of keel. Once she got 'the bone in her teeth,' USS Hancock could outrun terns!

'Do we not light the taff-rail lanthorns, nor show any binnacle lights, we mask all the stern windows, and your gun-room and I dine in the dark,' Lewrie hopefully said, 'then add a radical change of course… say due West just after full nightfall, they might stay on their present heading.'

'Which would place them ahead of us, to the Suth'rd, sir,' Lt. Langlie glumly commented, 'and sure we'd stumble over them within the week. And then what'd we say… sorry?'

'Own up that we're a pack o' fools,' Lewrie spat, lowering his telescope, 'who can't keep proper guard on an anchored ship.'

'I simply can't imagine that Mister Jugg turned pirate on us, sir,' Langlie said, sighing as he took off his hat and trailed fingers through his dark and curly locks. 'A surly, glum bastard he was, but he'd settled in main-well, and was ever in a fair way of performing his duties. Mister Burns, well… there's hen-headed for you, but Mister Towpenny and four reliable hands, even Toffett, to overcome on his own, sir? Idle hands the Devil's workshop or no, Captain, they'd only been becalmed aboard the prize a little more than a week. No, I can't see an uprising. More like, I suspect one of Choundas's small privateers sneaked in and cut her out in the dead of night, when only two or three were awake.'

'Supposed t'be awake,' Lewrie snidely retorted. 'Was it Mister Burns who had the deck, t'other hands could've set fire to her without a harsh word from him, the quakin' dullard. So timid he wouldn't say 'Boh' to a goose!'

'She could be alongside the Basse-Terre quays on Guadeloupe by now, sir,' Lt. Langlie went on. 'That devil Victor Hugues's valuable cargo back in his hands… that ogre Choundas laughing like a loon at re-taking her from you the best of all to him, sir,' Langlie remorselessly fantasised, 'getting some of his own back at our expense in more ways than one, d'ye see, buffing up…'

'Yes!' Lewrie finally barked. 'I do see, Mister Langlie, clear as a bloody damn' bell!'

'My pardons, sir, I…' Langlie said with a wince.

'Arrr!' Lewrie gave vent to a piratical growl, an expression he was becoming rather fond of; it was brusquely eloquent, in its own inarticulate way.

'At least, sir, the rapidity of our departure spared us Mister Peel's, or Mister Pelham's, presence,' Langlie pointed out, trying to salvage something worthwhile from the ongoing fiasco.

'Proving that God is, when it suits Him, just, Mister Langlie.'

'We stand on as we are then, sir?' Langlie enquired, happy for a change of topic. 'Until dark?'

'Aye,' Lewrie grunted. 'Little more we can do. We could hang the crew's clothing in the rigging for a quarter- knot more speed. If there was a spare inch o' rigging left. I'll be below.'

'Uhm… how is Toulon taking to his new, uhm…?' Lt. Langlie just had to ask.

'Oh, simply bloody fine, Mister Langlie! Like chalk an' cheese they are,' Lewrie gravelled, slamming the tubes of his telescope shut. 'Oil and vinegar… ham and bloody eggs, thankee for askin'.'

Lewrie stomped forrud to the larboard, windward, ladder to the gun-deck, tromped the steps downward and turned at its base, forcing a Marine sentry in full kit by his doors to stiffen, ready to salute.

'Sail ho!' the main-mast lookout cried, again.

'Now, bloody what?' Lewrie grumbled to himself.

' Two sail… four points off th' starb'd bows! Three sail… sailin' athwart, an' bound West-Nor'west!' the lookout further howled, which tweaked Lewrie from his funk and made him scamper to the quarterdeck, again.

'Just about due West of us,' he said half to himself, deploying his much-abused telescope once more by the barricade of hammock nets.

'Four sail, now!' the lookout shrilled. 'Four points off th' starb'd bows!'

'Mister Langlie, hands to stations to wear ship,' Lewrie snapped. 'Make our new course Nor'west by West. They could be another American convoy, late departin' for home, but… we'd better investigate.'

'Ahoy, th' deck!' a lookout called down from USS Sumter's mainmast cross-trees. 'Th' frigate's wearin' about t'starb'd tack!'

'Now where's he goin'?' Capt. McGilliveray wondered aloud. 'I could o' sworn he was bound for Guadeloupe, but here he goes a'harin' off to th' Nor'west. Most p'culiar.'

'Maybe she's spotted something, sir,' Lt. Claiborne, his First Officer, supposed. 'Or… what intelligence he received that caused him to tear outta port came a day late.'

'Aye, and th' onliest thing that'd whip Cap'm Lewrie t'sea that I know of d be news that th' French convoy's sailed,' McGilliveray replied, 'like we finally decided. Maybe that's why Proteus wasn't bound direct for Guadeloupe in th' first place, that a British spy got word of their departure. Time a boat could get to Antigua, they'd be about this far out, on course for Jacmel on Saint Domingue. Damn my eyes, sir, but I do b'lieve Cap'm Lewrie's got lucky, and espied 'em, after all! Desmond? Mister McGilliveray, mean t'say? Make a hoist to the Hancock, lad, an' make it… Alter,' 'Nor'west,' and 'In Pursuit.' In pursuit o' what, we don't rightly know yet, but there's some-thin' he's caught scent of that's put his tail up. Mister Claiborne! We'll wear ship to Nor'west, if ya please.'

'Aye, sir.'

'And no wonder Lewrie was so secretive,' Captain McGilliveray said, half to himself, slamming a fist on the nearest bulwark. 'Dour as ol' 'Thunderation' treated him, he doesn't want t'share 'em. Well, we'll see about that, won't we, ha ha!'

'Sumter signals that Proteus has worn about to the Nor'west and seems to be in pursuit of something over the horizon, sir,' Goodell's First Lieutenant related to him with the sombre gravitas their stern captain demanded from men he intended to groom and mould as gentlemen officers… if it killed them.

'Ah, hmm,' Capt. Goodell replied, clearing his throat. 'Do thee summon the hands to wear about as well, sir. So much undue haste is indicative of something worth chasing, aye, even in one so idle and indolent as Captain Lewrie struck me. Like all the British' he glowered, 'Thun-der-ation, what hypocrites are they! Beguile me for cooperation in his quest after one despicable Frenchman, appeal to honour… then dash off to have it all for himself, didst his intelligence smack of too much potential plunder, pah! Hypocrites, liars, and tyrants, every last one of those enervated… Babylonians!'

'Une voile!' the lookout atop Le Gascons main-mast cried. 'A sail, to windward! One point aft of the starboard beam! Royals, and topgallants… studding sails on topsail yards, I see!'

'Mon Dieu, merde alors' Capt. Griot said with a grimace. 'The enemy has found us, after all.' Griot raised his telescope and swept the tubes to their full extension, though there was little chance that he could espy anything from the quarterdeck, yet.

'What course does she steer?' Capt. Guillaume Choundas shouted upward, clump-shuffle-ticking to the starboard side.

'Bows on… no! She shows her larboard bows! Steering North-West!' the lookout responded.

'How many masts?' Choundas cried, his throat rasping harshly in unwonted effort, and with his eye shut in furious contemplation, with an imagined chart of the Caribbean in his mind.

'Twol So much canvas, messieurs, I can only make out two!' the lookout cried, after a long, frustrating pause of half a minute.

'Out of Antigua, for certain, Capitaine' Griot fretted, as he paced, 'which lies almost due East of our present position. Shaping course to the North-West…' Griot was hushed by the raising of his