The King

squarish bow thwart, a man dressed in tan canvas trousers, faded blue shirt and dark blue sailor's jacket, with a red kerchief about his neck. His feet were bare and horny as any sailor's and he looked sublimely at ease to ride without labor for a change, leaving the poling or sculling to the Chinese at the matching stern platform. A clay pipe fumed lazily in his mouth.

Just forward of amidships, not quite under the thatch-laced 'cabin' of the sampan, sat another European, though. And damned if he wasn't the same man Alan had seen scaling La Malouine's side not half an hour earlier! Closer to, when he could steal a glance at the sampan, he could espy a very slim young man, perhaps only a few years older than himself. There was that same dull red hair, pale skin and a slight, very tenuous attempt at a beard, which was the same dull ginger, a beard-lette which followed the line of the jaw very low down. Perhaps the man's essay at hiding what seemed a rather slack chin, or drawing the observer's eye upward from a prominent Adam's apple.

'Well, I'll be blowed!' Alan whispered. 'They come calling?' The sampan was not exactly aimed at Telesto's main chains and boarding ladder, but she was tending slowly enough in that direction to give the impression that that was her destination. 'What the Hell.'

Alan strode to the rail to look down upon them directly as the sampan got within good musket shot, about 75 yards off.

Since no one else seemed ready to do their duty, or even take outward notice of the sampan as they so-studiously avoided eyeing it, someone should do the normal thing.

'Damme yer eyes, bosun!' he shouted to the quarterdeck below, then turned to face the boat and cup his hands to shout 'Ahoy in the boat, there!'

'Passant!' the sailor on the bows replied with a wave of his pipe, jabbing the stem up-river in the vague direction of Jack Ass Point. 'Bon matin, m'seur!'

'And a good morning to you as well, sir!' Alan waved back. 'Bon matin a vous, aussi? Off to cherchez las putain in Hog Lane?'

Which raised a great Gallic shrug and laugh from the sailor.

'If you are, I hope your weddin' tackle rots off,' Alan muttered, still smiling. 'You poxy Frog bastard.'

The sailor waved back once more, as did the other man, and then they were past amidships, on their way up- stream. But damned if they weren't swiveling slowly on their seats and eyeing Telesto devilish sharp!

I do believe they're spying on us! Alan thought. What a lot of sauce these bloody Frogs have!

Chapter 6

Choundas,' Twigg told them a week later. 'One Guillaume Choundas. His ship, Poisson D'Or, has been out here in the Far East for the last two years. Coincidence? I think not. That's about the time the first ships began to disappear.'

'I see, sir,' Captain Ayscough nodded. 'Awfully young to be a ship's captain, though. What more do we know of him?'

'Come now, Captain Ayscough,' Twigg sneered, 'how many fond daddies get their sons made post-captain at the same age most young officers could only expect their lieutenancy! Admiral Rodney made his sixteen-year-old boy post into a fine frigate soon as he arrived in the West Indies on his last commission.'

'Let me ask again, sir, what do we know of him?' Ayscough retorted with a growl. Twigg had not become any easier to swallow in the past months, and his harshness grated upon their captain most of all, forced as he was into the closest familiarity with him.

'I mean, damme, sir, what a. few Royal Navy officers do for their own don't mean this pop-in-jay benefits from someone's 'interest' in the same manner,' Ayscough went on. 'Who and what the hell is he?'

'He, like your officers and senior hands, Captain Ayscough, is reputed to have been an officer in the French Royal service,' Twigg replied snappishly. 'Well thought of at one time, I'm told by certain informants. Commanded a sloop of war, what they call a corvette.'

'To be well thought of in their fleet, he'd have to be royal himself,' Choate pointed out, snuggling deeper into his coat. Despite a coal-fired heater in their captain's quarters, it was a cool night, and a stiff wind on the Pearl River made it seem even chillier. 'Some duke's by-blow, at best.'

'Not titled,' Twigg supplied. 'A commoner's lad. From Brittany. Perhaps from St. Malo. I believe his father's family is in the… uhm… fishing trade.'

'Wi' the profit from his voyages sae far, sir, he could buy any bluidy title he desired once he's hame,' McTaggart chuckled.

Twigg glared in McTaggart's direction, shutting him up. Alan was glad he was seated on the stern transom settee, out of range of Twigg's considerable amount of bile.

'Yet he rose in the French Navy,' Twigg went on.

'Only because he couldn't get into their Army, most like,' Alan said in spite of himself. 'Never made officer with hay still in one's ears. That takes both a title, and lashings of livres.'

'Quite right, Mister Lewrie,' Twigg allowed, sounding almost pleasant for once. 'So why did they not send one of their titled, and successful, frigate captains on this mission?'

'For pretty much the same reason they sent us, sir,' Brainard the sailing master griped. 'We're nobodies. Expendable and not much loss to the Fleet if we fail.'

'Thank you, Mister Brainard. I didn't know you thought so well of us!' Ayscough laughed bitterly. 'If you're correct, though, one begins to wonder in what repute you were held to be part of our band, eh?'

'Ain't we a merry crew, Alan?' Burgess marveled with a cynical shake of his head.

'Burge, there's so much brotherly love and cooperation in this cabin, I feel positively inspired!' Alan whispered back.

'Back to the subject at hand, please,' Twigg ordered. 'And if you two could hold down the school-boy twitterings over there? Yes, Mister Brainard, the French sent this talented young peasant to do their dirty work for them. 'Cause they can't sully their limp little hands at it, for one. For a second, they're not ruthless enough to deal with native pirates and prosper. And perhaps, because they knew if they held out enough promise of reward to this wretch Choundas, he'd leap at any opportunity for continued employment.'

For a summary, it still sounded hellish like the reasons they had been called to service themselves, to Alan's lights.

'He's an aspiring brute from Brittany. Clever enough in his own fashion, I'm sure. Perhaps, like I said, a St. Malo corsair.'

'So was this Sicard, sir,' Percival stuck in, breaking his usual silences. 'Sicard has the large crew in La Malouine; this Choundas of yours has a small crew.'

'Damme, he'll fry his brains if he keeps that up,' Alan muttered to Chiswick.

'Yes?' Twigg rapped out, impatient to go on, and a bit surprised to hear from Percival after all these months.

'Well, sir, seems to me Choundas has the ship made for privateering, Sicard has the perfect old tub to act as the cartel for all the loot,' Percival stammered out, turning red from being on the spot, from the effort of erudition and from the possible fear he was making a total ass of himself. 'They could both act innocent… or something.'

'The two of them working in collusion?' Alan blurted, unwilling to see Percival take a single trick. 'Well, damme!'

'We have no proof of that, Mister Percival, though the connection is tempting,' Twigg allowed. 'Sicard seems honest enough, and he's never been in their Navy. Been out here for years. Dabbled at privateering in the last war against our trade, but then, what French sailor didn't, at one time or another.'

'Cargoes, Zachariah,' Wythy rumbled. 'Where'd Sicard get his bloody odd cargo, then? Furs from Nootka