THE GUN KETCH

He had taken the deck at eight bells of the mid-watch, at four of the clock in a chilly, dark morning, as the hands surged up to stow their hammocks in the nettings, wash down the decks, and stand to Dawn Quarters before their breakfast. To fret and pace as the stars paled from the gloomy skies, to see details in the clouds in the false- dawn, and watch the last of the moon sink below the horizon.

'Aloft, there!' he shouted to the lookouts.

'Notnin', sir! Clear 'orizons!'

'Damn!' he spat

'Sir, it's…' Ballard attempted to console.

'Oh, the devil take you, Mister Ballard!' Alan snarled. He took a deep breath to calm himself, and paced off his disappointment, back to the taffrails before returning. 'Very well, secure from quarters, and release the people to breakfast.'

'Aye, aye, sir,' Ballard replied, not in the slightest miffed by Lewrie's petulant outburst after a year and a half together.

'Sorry, Arthur,' Lewrie muttered, smiling sheepishly.

'It's just your way, sir,' Ballard smiled in return. 'Soon as the galley's hot, I'll send Cony up with coffee for you. I assume you will keep the deck.' That was not a question.

'Aye, I will, and thankee,' Lewrie nodded. 'More of my bloody… way!' Distressed as he was, Lewrie could not help smiling at himself.

Say Finney's lugger made seven-and-a-half knots, though, Alan calculated in moody silence; five hours' lead to start with, and 160 sea-miles to The Stream… whilst we fetched it in 150 miles. God, we might have cut three hours off his lead. And we're a knot faster, say, all last night and all day today, with the current, now he thinks he's clear of pursuit We'll make twenty-four more miles a day than he, so… if his original lead was only thirty-seven miles…Christ! What if he did put into Andros, the Berrys, inshore of the Gulf Stream down at Bimini to wait it out? Or, he could be flying everything aloft but his laundry, all this time… We'll never catch him up!

'Coffee, sir,' Cony announced half an hour later.

'Hmmph?' Lewrie growled, startled from his musings.

'Yer coffee, sir,' Cony offered. 'An' wot'll ya 'ave fer yer breakfast, sir?'

'This'll do, Cony. This'll do for now,' he grumped. 'Thankee.'

'Aye, aye, sir,' Cony nodded sorrowfully.

Bounding, swooping, rolling at the top of a wave, Alacrity was driven on, her course due north. Foam creamed down her flanks to lay roiled astern, quarter-waves sucking low at her after hull as thesea made a perfect shallow S, horizontally from bow to stern, frothing in a millrace under her transom. Eight-and- three-quarter knots now, as enough cargo and artillery had been shifted aft to lift her bows. On steeper rollers she surfed forward, and sometimes defied the ocean a hold on her, the bow-wave breaking aft of her cutwater, and her whole hull lifting from the sea in her haste, as if she would take wings and fly in those moments when wind and sea conjoined, before falling away to snuffle deep and plow the water again with a disappointed soughing.

'Sail ho!' the lookout screamed at last from the cross-trees. 'Where away?' Commander Rodgers shouted back, wakened from his nap in Alan's sybaritic canvas sling chair.

'Two points off the larboard bows! A little inshore! Nought but tops'ls an' royals!'

'What's to loo'rd?' Lewrie asked, rubbing sleep from his own eyes, his skin tingling from too long in the sun in a restless nod.

'Almost due west by now, sir, 'tis Savannah,' Fellows reported. 'Nor'west is Charleston. Little over an hundred mile to either.'

'And we're to windward of her, whoever she is,' Lewrie crowed, fully awake. 'She carries on north, she'll ram herself into the sand shoals off Wilmington, but she'll not weather the Outer Banks, not if I have a say in it! Mister Ballard, you have the deck, I'm going to spy out our little mystery ship.'

He slung a telescope over his shoulder, leapt for the shrouds and went aloft, aching to see for himself.

'There she be, sir,' the lookout said, once he' d found a perch on the narrow slats of the cross-trees.

'Look like a lugger to you?' Alan demanded, extending the tube of his glass.

'Hard t'say from 'ere, sir. Jus' tops'ls, so far,' the lookout opined. 'Funny angle, though, Cap'n, sir. Like Levanter lateens, or some'n ain't got 'er lift-lines set proper to 'er royals.'

Alacrity lifted on a swell as Lewrie laid the spyglass level on the tiny tan imperfections that marred the even horizon. Miles off, the other ship was lifted upwards as well for a long breath or two, but dropped almost from view as Alacrity settled in a deep trough.

'I'd almost…' he sighed, lowering the heavy tube for awhile. He stood, precariously, on the cross-tree braces, wrapping one arm to the upper mast, inside taut halyards and lift-lines. Braced securely, he raised the telescope again. The distant sails swam into focus.

'Three-masted,' he grunted.

'Aye, like lateeners, or… Woooo' he whooped, loud enough to startle people on the decks below. 'They're gaff top-mast stays'ls. She's a three-masted lugger!'

A lugger would mount small, oddly shaped sails between the tip of the upper masts and the gaff boom at the top of her mainsails, and that was what he had seen! It was a lugger, sure! But whose?

'Keep a sharp eye on her,' he told his lookout. 'Sing out, if she alters course or changes the slightest bit.'

'Aye, aye, sir!'

Lewrie took a stay to the deck, tar and slush on his clothing be-damned, to join the curious on the quarter- deck.

'It's a lugger. Mister Neill, steer us a point free larboard. We'll close her, slow. I make her twelve miles off now. By the end of the first dog watch, we'll have her at less than ten miles, so we may figure out if she's the Car… if she's Finney's.'

'If she wishes to keep to the Gulf Stream, she's going to have to harden up and go closer-hauled, sir,' Fellows suggested. 'Allow me to suggest we stand on north, sir, we'll close her even so. Another two hours, and we'll lose the current ourselves inshore.'

'And so will she, if she can't get to windward of us,' Alan said. 'And she won't,' he vowed.

'Chase is goin' close-hauled, sir!' the lookout hallooed.

'Belay, Mister Neill. Mister Ballard, lay us hard on the wind.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

Whatever she was, whoever the lugger belonged to, she was trying to flee, to get up to windward, and keep the advantage of the current of the Gulf Stream to weather Cape Hatteras and the Outer Banks. One more confirming sign that it most likely was Jack Finney, awakened to the fact of a pursuit.

No longer a mystery, Lewrie thought with satisfaction; now she was a chase!

The afternoon wore on, with both vessels clawing up to windward. Alacrity was already the possessor of the wind gauge. Weatherly as a lugger was, she could attain perhaps a full point closer to the winds, but Alacrity was just the slightest bit faster. Making leeway as she did, she still head-reached her chase, and closed the range to eleven miles, to ten, to nine, bringing the lugger almost hull- up, as Alacrity sailed the shorter closing angle.

'We're gaining on her, by Christ!' Rodgers chortled with glee.

'The Caroline was New Providence-built, sir,' Lieutenant Ballard told him coolly, blushing a bit as he pronounced her name.'As flat-ran and shoal-draught as Alacrity. Perhaps more so. But she makes just as much leeway as we do, with so little below the waterline for the sea to bite on. Long as we hold the weather gauge…'

'And damme if we might just be half a knot faster,' Lewrie added with joy. 'A full knot off the wind in the Gulf Stream. She'll be within range of random shot in six hours.'

'He'll try to slip away once it's dark,' Rodgers snorted. 'No lights showin', they could tack an' pass astern.'

'We've moon enough to see that, sir,' Lewrie countered. 'And, to expect to beat against the Gulf Stream? No.'

'Chase is 'aulin' 'er wind, there!' the lookout interrupted., 'Turnin' west an' runnin' free, d'ye hear, there!'

'By God, here's another angle to cut short!' Lewrie laughed as he grabbed Ballard by the arm. 'Arthur, haul our