The King

stern, far out ahead of them, and those almost on the rough edge of the horizon, so low were they to the water, and so far off by now after their triangular diversion. It took a sharp eye to make out that there were two and not one, foreshortened together as they were.

'Well, damme,' Ayscough muttered after half an hour had passed. 'Where is that bastard? Not hide nor hair of him. Can't even smell him. Anyone see phosphorescence from his wake ahead? No? Damme!'

'Has to be ahead of us,' Twigg insisted.

'Might have reefed for the night, same as us,' Choate opined. 'Still, even at the four knots we were doing before we turned, we'd at least be abeam of them. He'd have slowed to keep his interval.'

'Or,' Ayscough wondered aloud, 'Sicard would have dashed on ahead. The cutter's lights are closer together than our taffrail posts by eighteen feet, and lower to the water. He might have cracked on more sail to catch up. Mister Choate, hands aloft. Lay out and let fall the tops'Is to the second reef. Loose t'gallants to the first reef.'

'Aye, sir. Bosun, no pipes. Topmen of the watch lay aloft!'

'There, sir!' Hogue almost screamed from the larboard gangway ladder. 'Something went between us and the cutter's lights! Two points off the larboard bows, sir!'

'Avast, Mister Choate. Quartermaster, put your helm down. One point closer to the wind. Make her head sou'sou'east,' Ayscough barked. 'Hands to the braces.'

'Aye, sir,' the quartermaster replied, spinning his spokes on the huge double wheel slowly. 'Helm down a point. Sou'sou'east. Wind large on the larboard quarter, sir.'

'Thus, quartermaster. Steady as she goes.'

'Aye aye, sir. Sou'sou'east, thus,' the man intoned.

Maddeningly, after that brief, tantalizing glimpse, there was still nothing to be seen. Another half an hour passed. They allowed the hands at Quarters to stand easy, or lay down to nap on the bare decks. They rotated the lookouts to allow fresher eyes to peer into the almost Stygian blackness, searching for their foe.

Another half-hour passed.

'There!' Percival rasped in a harsh whisper. 'Hear it?'

Very faint, almost like a fantasy, there came a chiming.

'Six bells o' the evening watch,' Ayscough agreed. 'Damme, for us to be able to hear that, he has to be up to windward of us. And not too far to windward, at that!'

Hogue with his incredibly sharp eyes was back from larboard, tugging on the captain's sleeve, and pointing to their left, over the larboard side. The captain stood behind Hogue, letting his arm be a pointer. Ayscough sucked in a quick breath, then let it out in a sigh of contentment. 'Ayyye!' he whispered.

There was something out there. Something a little more solid than the spectral shadows that had played at the edge of their vision for the last hour, the kind that are seen but not seen, apprehended and then lost to sight the harder one peered for them. This one did not go away.

'Helm down another half a point, quartermaster. Handsomely does it,' Ayscough ordered.

'Aye, sir,' the senior quartermaster agreed, grunting as he put his weight to the spokes, and the steering tackle ropes on the wheel barrel groaned softly. Three, four spokes of larboard helm, and Telesto leaned a bit as the wind came larger on her left beam.

'Yes!' Alan muttered. 'Sir, a light!'

It wasn't much. A tiny, insubstantial afterthought of a light. Not so much the light itself, but the outer glow it threw, like the glow of a seaport under the horizon reflected on clouds.

'One… two…' Ayscough counted. 'Yes, one at his binnacle, one forrud, that'd be by his fo'c'sle belfry. Damme, look at that!'

A smoky brown square appeared, barely discernible from black, behind the second glimmer, an almost butcher-paper brown.

'Captain's or wardroom quarter-gallery, sir,' Alan supplied. 'They've some canvas screens or curtains over the windows, but there's a lantern behind.'

'Aye.' Ayscough was almost panting with excitement. 'If he…' Ayscough held up his hands, calculating angles and distance. Left hand by the brownish hint of illumination, right hand and index finger aimed at the foremost glow like a gun. 'Two points off the larboard bow, and I make the range to be two cables. We've got him! Mister Choate, wake the hands at Quarters. I intend to rake him in passing with the starboard battery. Boot him right up the arse. Then wear ship and give him the larboard battery from close aboard. If we take him by surprise he'll fall right down to us. To hell with the wind gauge! He'll not be expecting us to fight from leeward.'

Alan dashed down below to the lower gun deck as midshipmen and ship's corporals passed their messages. He found Hoolahan, his Irish gunner, resting on a jute-bound bale of cloth bolts, silk bolts that were worth more money than his entire county back home. Owen, the senior quarter-gunner, was napping with his back leant against a carline post that supported the upper deck, his feet propped up on a crate of tableware worth a duke's ransom.

'Stand by, men. We've spotted him. Starboard battery first, right up his stern, then larboard guns at twenty paces.'

They could hear gunports being drawn open overhead, and the heavy, dull rumble of gun-trucks as the eighteen-pounders were drawn foot by foot to emerge from the opened ports. They unpegged and opened their own. Cool night air, damp and salty, entered, making them all tremble with chill. With anticipation, and a little fear, too.

'Ah, yes,' Alan said, sticking his head out a port. Once one spotted La Malouine, it was hard to believe that she could ever have been hidden by the night. There was the wash and greenish phosphor glow of her wake. The faintest reflection of that phosphorescence on her lower hull at the waterline, and those betraying glimmers of belfry and binnacle lanterns. 'Can you mark her, Owen?'

'Uhmm… might need a set of younger eyes, sir. Here, Hoolahan, you could poach a bunny at midnight.'

'Why, so oi kin, sor!' Hoolahan grinned, ever the cheerful one. 'Jus' don't let 'im be loik t' last lot. Barely got the deck clean.'

'Just look, don't prose on, boy,' Owen groaned.

'Aye, sor. Mebbe cable, cable 'un t'half now, Mister Owen.'

Telesto leaned to starboard more as she went up to windward. Gunners removed tompions, spun the elevating screws to compensate for the heel of the ship.

Greased slides whispered as the short, brutal thirty-two-pounder carronades were run out. Iron wheels creaked as the lay of the barrels was corrected. 'Oi kin smell 'er now, sor. Gahh, bloody Frog stink!' 'As you bear!' a voice shouted. 'Fire!'

It crossed Lewrie's mind that this ship had better indeed be La Malouine, and not some parsimonious merchantman that begrudged even a ha'porth of whale-oil for lanterns.

The starboard twelve-pounder chase gun barked as the forecastle ranged even with the strange ship's stern, sending a hellish finger of pink-and-coral flame into the night, fuzee-flashing just how near they were to their target, and how large she bulked. There were not a hundred yards between them! Then the larger, deeper-throated eighteen-pounders spoke, loud as thunderclaps from a lightning bolt's near miss. Shot after shot as each barrel came even with the foe, more pink-and-coral flames, more red-and-amber sparks of half-spent gunpowder. Clouds of foul-smelling smoke wafted downwind, wreathing about the other ship.

'Ready… cock your locks… as you bear… fire!' Lewrie intoned. The forward-most carronade belched with a fiery eructation, whipping backward on its greased slide quick enough to shriek wood on wood, and set the grease smoking. Most satisfying deep bangs of guns going off, followed immediately by the crash of heavy iron hitting timbers, the moaning wail of oak and teak as scantlings were shattered, and the thonk of balls ranging down the entire undefended length of the hull inside their target. Shattering tableware and vases, ripping precious cargo of wallpaper, silks, teas apart in aromatic clouds. Ripping men apart as they hung close- packed as sausages in a butcher's window in their hammocks. Killing men with the air of their passage without making a mark upon them. Breaking at last into savage iron shards among a sleet-storm of broken beams and frames, which in those enclosed spaces below decks would whirl and maim as ruthlessly as irate, razor-tipped sparrows.

'Now, ready the larboard battery!' Lewrie yelled as the last of their carronades had recoiled inward. Ports slammed open, making space for the wide-mouthed barrels to be run out. 'Hull the bastards when I give the word, Owen.'