on, close-hauled… uhm…'
'Surely, our brief spell together, since Gibraltar, sir,' Alan chuckled to put him at his ease, 'and you're still afraid I'll
'Aye, sir!' Knolles grinned shyly. 'Spin the chase out. Make her work harder for her supper.'
'An excellent idea, Mister Knolles. Very well, ease her. Wear us a point free, off the wind, so
'Aye aye, Captain,' Knolles replied, turning to issue orders to bracetenders, idlers, and helm, the forecastle men who tended the jib sheets and the bosun and his mate.
No way we'd
'Hark'ee, sir!' Buchanon called, speaking for perhaps a second time in the last hour, as Three Bells of the Forenoon Watch chimed.
'Hmm?' Lewrie asked, wondering if there was something he had forgotten that he'd ordained to happen at half-past nine a.m.
'Thunder, sir,' Buchanon oracled, sniffing at the wind with his large, crooked nose, like a fresh-awakened mastiff.
A squall line, that'd be a blessing, Alan wished; bags of rain and thunder, somewhere off to windward. Dive into it before the foe did, and tack away, leaving him to play 'silly buggers' with himself.
'But, there's not a storm cloud in sight, Mister Buchanon,' he was forced to say, after a long, and hopeful, search of the horizon.
'Thunder, sir,' Buchanon insisted. 'Hark'ee.'
Lewrie went up to the windward rail, left the quarterdeck to amble forrud along the larboard gangway, to get away from the noise a ship makes, or a crew makes. Something… but what? Once more he raised his telescope, resting it on the foremast stays, this time.
Nope, nary a smudge upwind. The southern horizon was knife-edged, now that the mists and haze had cleared. Roily, since waves made it, but… was there more cloud just looming over the sea, far down sou'west? Not squall- gray or blue-gray, but…
Damme if it
Or was it a devoutly wished-for fantasy?
Again came something that
'Bosun Porter, pipe the 'still'!' he snapped.
He'd served captains who did it; made their people work quiet, with pipes, halliard twitches and finger snaps as orders to the hands their slaves. After
Yes, it
'Mister Buchanon is right, gentlemen,' he told the quarterdeck. 'I heard thunder on the horizon. Under the horizon, to us, of yet, but… there is a faint smudge of
One hour more, standing on, on
It was piping up, at last! Not gusting, never approaching any blusters, but it was rising slowly, the nearer they sailed toward the single tumulus of cloud on the sou'west horizon. And beyond the main cloud mass, there appeared more mere suggestions of clouds, fuller and more substantial than the mare's tails aloft, seductively tantalizing in round cumulous detail.
Pristine white, those clouds, though, for such a din of thunder that came faintly, but more often, under the rush-keening of the wind. No black or blue-gray hazes of an advancing storm front, no trace of an expected towering thunderhead. Nor of the vast sweep of gloom, which should be swathing half the weather horizon. Nor the flickering sizzle of lightning, which accompanied all the faint thunder-growl.
Lewrie began to get a queasy feeling, though he masked it well, by pretending to take a nap in a wood-and- canvas deck chair with wide, well-spaced feet.
'Deck, there!' the foremast lookout finally hollered. 'They be
'How many tops'ls?' Lieutenant Knolles shouted back, with the aid of a brass speaking trumpet, as Alan pretended to 'wake.'
'Dozens, sir!' came the reply. 'One point off th' larboard bow, t'
Lewrie arose and took a catlike stretch.
'Well, could be 'at grain convoy,' Buchanon opined. 'Hun'r'ds o' ships, I heard, Mister Knolles. Indiamen with New Orleans rice… more with corn an' wheat from th' Chesapeake. 'Ose Ew-nited States of America payin' eir debt t'France.
'Somebody's lit into someone, Mister Buchanon, ' Lewrie agreed. Warily. There was too much thunder for ships of the line in General Chase of prizes. No convoy could ever make such a din, either.
'Perhaps we might gobble one up, Captain?' Knolles asked. He came of a good family, yes, but they weren't
'I'm going aloft, again. Mister Knolles, might you lend me your glass?'
Forward this time, to scale the foremast, right up to the crosstrees to join the lookout, a spry young topman named Rushing.
'Mine arse on a bandbox!' Lewrie muttered, once he'd had his long look. 'That's no grain convoy.'
'Nossir, it ain't,' Rushing agreed breezily.
' 'Bout twelve miles off, would you say, Rushing?'
'Ay, Cap'um. 'Bout that.'
'Be up to them…' He pulled out his new watch. It was nearly gone eleven of the forenoon. An hour-and-a- half… two hours, and they would be up within spitting distance. Or shooting distance.
Without another word, Lewrie took hold of a standing backstay and clambered down it, legs locked and going hand-over-hand, like any topman. Hating every nutmeg-shrinking moment of it, of course, with nothing but oak to stop his fall from nearly 100 feet above the deck, should he slide too fast and burn his hands, or swing away and dangle by his fists alone.
Once on the quarterdeck again, he gathered his breath by taking another peek at the French frigate off to the east. Their closest pursuer was about five miles off, hull-up now, and driving hard. She had slowly gained on