THE GUN KETCH

wind, now! We might gain a mile on him if we're quick enough! Come about to west-nor'west!'

'Aye, aye, sir. Mister Harkin, all hands! Ready to come about!' Rodgers and Lewrie got out of Ballard's way, taking a corner of the quarter-deck free of tumult to inspect their chase with telescopes.

'Runnin' for Charleston, it appears, into neutral waters,' Com-. mander Rodgers decided. 'Damn him.'

'He has too much sail aloft,' Lewrie stated. 'Inshore, he'D pick up a land breeze later today. See how she heels, sir? That's too much heel for a flat-run hull, even off the wind as she is now. She's sailing on her shoulder, not her bottom. If he doesn't reef in those lateener topmast stays'ls, she's working too hard, bows-down.'

'By God, he's no real sailor, is he, Lewrie?' Rodgers hooted. 'Had you some champagne, I'd pop it now, to celebrate. We'll have him, by God, we'll have the bugger yet!'

'Many a slip, 'twixt the cup and the Up, sir,' Lewrie smiled. 'Aye, he may not be as tarry as he boasted. But he's running us one merry little chase. And, when it comes to it, he'll fight like some cornered rat. Now, to keep him out of American jurisdiction, we have to overtake him, take the lee position to block him.'

'We'll have him,' Rodgers insisted stubbornly. 'We'll have him.'

Chapter 12

By sunset, Alacrity left the Gulf Stream, inshore into waters that chopped instead of rolled. Caroline was still an hour ahead at the least, out of the Stream first, and making a more direct course, with less leeway, even as the land breeze found her. Try as they might to counter the last of the powerful current, Alacrity ended up dead astern of the chase, beating against the land breeze, lumping and booming against the chop and the short rollers of the returning scend of waves breaking over the horizon against the Carolina coast.

'She still makes too much heel,' Lewrie decided after pondering the dark spectre in his telescope. 'So do we,' he added, comparing the angle of his decks against the chase's.

'Nighttime land breezes will be gentler, sir, not as strong,' Ballard speculated. 'That'll ease her.'

'Topmen of the watch aloft, Mister Ballard. We'll take first reef in the fore-tops'l,' Lewrie ordered.

'Are ya daft, Lewrie?' Rodgers hissed from the gloom of sunset by his elbow. 'I thought ya wanted t'catch the bastard?'

'I do, sir. But the fore-tops'l depresses the bows, and heels us too much, even going close-hauled as we are. Letting the fore-and-aft sails do the work lets us pinch up to windward half a point.'

'You are captain, sir, but I'm your superior,' Rodgers grunted.

'Do but let me try it, sir,' Lewrie begged. 'Two hours. There's moon enough to see her, and a sextant'11 tell us if she's gaining, by the height of her mast-trucks 'bove the horizon. We're even in speed for now, perhaps a quarter-knot or half-knot faster, and that's not enough to intercept her before she's in American waters.'

'Two hours, then,' Rodgers allowed at last. 'But should we fall too far behind, it'll be your fault, Lewrie. Your fault, hear me?' 'Aye, aye, sir.'

Eased just the slightest bit, though, sailing more upright on her natter bottom, Alacrity closed the range. Six miles off, five and then four, with more of Finney's Caroline visible above the horizon at each chiming of the watch bells. Satisfied that his solution had worked, Lewrie slumped down for a nap far aft on the signal-flag lockers, muffled against the sea-wind's chill in a gro-gram boat-cloak. With his head lolled against the taffrail, he nodded off at last, his last waking sight the dark, creaming wake alongside.

Cony came to wake him just before eight bells of the middle, a few minutes before four a.m., with a mug of black coffee. Alan took one sip to sluice foul sleep from his mouth, spat it over the side, then drank deep before handing the mug back to his servant. He walked forward for his telescope, and a view ahead, to assure himself that their chase was still there.

Caroline loomed even taller above the horizon of false-dawn, a slanted black semi- colon on the glittering silvery trough of the last of the moon astern. Using a sextant and a slate, Lewrie determined, assuming Caroline's masts stood seventy feet above her decks, that she was still being slowly overtaken, and was now a little less than three miles off, no matter how much sail she flew, which course she steered. And she was still heeled over too far!

'He said he'd made third mate,' Lewrie muttered to himself as he stowed the sextant away in the binnacle cabinet. 'Surely, he must know to ease her aloft.'

'Sir?' Sailing Master Fellows queried his grunts. 'Two hours, I make it, to good practice for our guns, sir,' he substituted.

'But by dead reckoning, Captain, sir,' Fellows countered wearily, 'three hours to the Charleston Bar. And within range of the forts. We will be cutting it exceeding fine, sir. I doubt our rebellious cousins would appreciate us taking her right on their front stoop.'

'I doubt the United States of America would shelter pirates. All the more reason to catch her up before we reach their waters.'

'Aye, sir,' Fellows nodded in agreement 'Excuse me, sir, but I do believe the sea-wind is returning. A puff or two from the south'rd, so far, but it is veering, sir. We'll have stern winds in an hour, I believe, on our larboard quarter, from the sou'east.'

'My respects to the first lieutenant, Mister Fellows, and…'

'I'm here, sir,' Ballard announced from Lewrie's off-side, just at his elbow, which made Alan almost leap in surprise.

'Ah, good morning, Mister Ballard. Hands to the sheets and the braces, sir. And shake out that reef in the fore-tops'l.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

'Land ho!' a bow lookout shouted aft. 'Charleston Light, fine on the bows!'

'Less than three hours to Yankee jurisdiction, then,' Fellows sighed. 'Sorry, sir, it seems my dead reckoning's off a mite.'

'Time enough,' Lewrie insisted. 'Just barely. I hope.'

True sunrise came, and with it, steady offshore winds out of the east-sou'east, laden with the smell of storm and rain later in the day; the dawn a gray and gloomy beast that dingied the whitecaps and stained the seas iron- gray as spilled washwater and suds. Two miles astern of Caroline they approached, relentlessly gaining; then only one mile, the range of random shot for their six-pounders, even as the coast appeared to the west, a thin dark green and blue thread, and the tall spire of St. Michael's church rose skyward above The Beacon and the Charleston Light. Caroline wore off the wind a little to the nor'west and Alacrity surged directly up her wake, following the leads and the sea marks for Five-Fathom Hole inside the Charleston Bar, south of the Ship Channel.

It would be cut exceedingly fine, as Mr. Fellows had predicted; half an hour would spell the difference between Finney's escape or his ruin, of being brought to battle or his gaining American waters.

'Seven cables, sir,' Ballard estimated hopefully. 'About fourteen hundred yards. We could try shots from the bow chase guns.'

'It's no good, Lewrie,' Commander Rodgers griped, all but wringing his hands. 'To fetch him to close- broadsides, we'll have to sail within range of Fort Johnston an' Fort Moultrie. Damme if we ain't but two miles off the Charleston Light now, sir.'

'They do not have a battery to enforce their jurisdiction there, sir,' Lewrie countered, drawn from dire musings about something aloft carrying away, of some structural failure which would rob them of the prize at the last second. 'We can chase her another two miles farther, out of Five-Fathom Hole, right to the bar, sir. That's what their guns cover, sir.'

'He must bear off more northerly out of Five-Fathom Hole,sir,' Ballard suggested slyly. 'Might we not wear ship now and cut the angle to close even more?'

'Splendid, Mister Ballard!' Lewrie grinned. 'And begin firing with the larboard battery. I'd admire did you Beat to Quarters, sir.' 'Chase gun!' Midshipman Parham shouted, spotting a puff of gun-smoke on Caroline's stern. The light ball moaned past the starboard side to skip twice until it buried itself astern. 'She has