A Jester’s Fortune

A quick glance astern told Lewrie that Pylades was well up by then and could deal with the one trying to run off the wind.

'Mister Knolles, we'll tack ship. Mister Crewe? Once we're on starboard tack and settled down, be ready with the starboard battery!'

'Aye, aye, sir!'

* * *

And, once settled down, after a breathless burst of energy from the hands to cross the eye of the wind, there the bilander was off the starboard side, just a bit forward of abeam, and within a quarter mile of Jesters guns!

'Ready, Mister Crewe!' Lewrie alerted him again. 'We'll haul off a point, to let the entire battery bear. Helm up, quartermaster.'

'Aye aye, sir. Helm up a point. Steerin' Nor-Nor'east.'

'Starb'd batt'ry…!' Crewe bellowed over the rush of the wind in the sails and rigging. 'Wait for it! Fire!'

Rolling slightly, rising slightly, atop the scend of the sea and stable for a moment-'on the up-roll'-the guns erupted. Great hot gouts of smoke and embers burst forth, to be quickly winged away alee; a full dozen long-guns or carronades flung solid shot at the struggling old bilander, and she disappeared in a furious froth of spray and pillars of foam, close-aboard her larboard side. That grotesque lateen mains!, whose boom stretched from her amidships to far over her stern, shattered by the mainmast trunk to come sagging alee like a broken goose's wing, as she shivered to the impact of 9-pounder and 18-pounder iron. She rolled hard to starboard in recoil, against the press of wind on her remaining sails, before rolling again, this time so far to larboard they could look down on her main deck. Without the balance of that lateen mains'l, and with square-sails and lateen jibs up forward close- hauled, she fell off fast, slowing in a welter of snuffled foam. Crippled.

Aha! Lewrie exulted to himself, seeing the Tricolour soar up her damaged main mast. She was a Frog, just as I thought! He then gave vent to a real, audible cheer as that flag was just as quickly hauled down, in sign she'd struck to them… to Jester.

'Mister Hyde,' Lewrie called for his eldest midshipman, 'do you take a party aboard her. With Mr. Sadler, the Bosun's Mate, as senior hand. My cox'n Andrews to assist. Mr. Knolles, fetch to! Mr. Cony, we'll fetch to! And hoist a boat off the beams for the boarding party!'

'Aye aye, sir!'

'Mister Crewe!' Lewrie crowed, 'Damn' good shootin', sir, as you always do! Two guns to remain manned until the boarding party's aboard her. Secure the rest.'

There were dozen things to do at once; take in sail, cock Jester up to the wind and rig out the falls and tackle to hoist a boat off the waist tier which spanned the amidships. And all the while he kept a wary eye on their supposedly helpless prize, which was now also cocked up into the wind, her yards nearly bare of canvas and her crew slumping hangdog and dejected at her rails.

It was a full quarter hour later that Lewrie had a moment to spare for what else was going on, and he was only called away from his own concerns by the sound of more gunfire down to the Sou'east.

Pylades had stood on, close-hauled on the larboard tack, chasing after the second bilander. She was three miles further inshore by then. Without her prize, it seemed, and venting her anger over it upon a host of local feluccas and small xebecs. The pirates had the bilander not only surrounded, but under way and heading inshore for Bar, snapping back with light artillery like a pack of starving wolves guarding their first kill in weeks from a rogue lion.

Lewrie raised his telescope to take a good gander, standing by the starboard quarterdeck ladder to the waist.

'Sir, it's Hyde!' Midshipman Spendlove intruded. Lewrie swung his ocular leftward, refocusing on the figure of a grinning Midshipman Hyde on the captured bilander's larboard bulwarks, waving at them. The bilander had fallen down off-wind to Jester in the meantime and was now a bit less than a cable's distance- or 240 yards-off, and within hailing. He could see that the prize-crew had erected a spare fore-tops'l yard on her, aft, fitted with a longboats lug-sail for a spanker, so she would have some drive and some leverage to counter her foresails for steerage.

'Speaking-trumpet, Mister Spendlove,' Lewrie bade, trading telescope for the open-ended brass cone. 'Mister Hyde!' He bellowed across the distance. 'Follow in my wake! We'll head out to sea!' He gestured with one emphatic wave of his left arm westward.

'Aye aye, sir!' Came the answering wail, thin and reedy. 'We'll follow you out!'

There was more gunfire from the Sou'east, thin and flat. A final fit of pique, it seemed, for Pylades was hauling her wind, turning away from ' the coast to make her own way out to deep water. Denied her prize.

Another quick exchange of telescope and speaking-trumpet with Mr. Spendlove and Lewrie could see even more boats had come out from shore-tiny fishing smacks, small coasters, feluccas or light galleys- just about anything that could bear sails or oarsmen. The second unfortunate French bilander was in the centre, within a mile of the shore, hemmed in closely between her original half dozen captors. Had Pylades contested them for her, Lewrie realised, she'd have been swamped on every hand by six dozen craft bearing hundreds, perhaps upwards of a thousand bloodthirsty pirates or half-starved villagers. They would look upon the coming of a European ship laden with rare goods like the inmates at Bedlam would the arrival of a drunken pieman in their midst, his trays heaped with piping-hot treats. Neutral Mon-tenegran or Albanian villagers, he reminded himself with a snort of frustration, people they had no plaint against, nor any business fighting!

Were they as poverty-stricken as Major Simpson suggested back in Trieste, one scruffy bilander would represent a king's ransom, with all her nails, iron bolts, blocks, rope, furniture, guns and powder, as well as her canvas and cargo. And they'd fight to the last tooth and nail before they'd let her go, as fiercely as a she-bear defending her cubs. But it looked, from where he was standing, much like a horde of rats savaging a side of beef left unguarded!

'We'll not go inshore and cut her out, sir?' Spendlove asked. 'Doubt it, Mister Spendlove.' Lewrie grimaced as he lowered his telescope. 'Mister Knolles? Make sail, and shape a course Due West for now. We'll escort our prize out, and close Pylades.'

'I mean, sir…' Spendlove gently insisted. 'Mr. Buchanon says this stretch of coast is Muslim. Ottoman Turk. And she's French, so…'

'Want t'die, young sir?' Buchanon sneered, having heard his name cited, as they plodded back toward the helm. 'See some o' th' hands die t save Frogs? Or a ship 'at'd be mostly looted 'fore dark anyways?'

'Well, no, sir, but… mean t say, sirs… Frogs or no, they are fellow Christians. Even if they are Papists.' Spendlove reddened. 'I just wondered… what would happen to them, do we not…'

'Fetch a pretty penny.' Mr. Buchanon sighed, rubbing the side of his nose. 'Per'aps th' most value o' 'at prize, do 'ey sell 'em in a slave-market. Blue-eyed, white-skin Christians're valuable. Do 'ey not cut a few throats first, mind. Nor rough 'em up too vicious.'

'As the old saying goes, Mister Spendlove,' Lewrie said, as he slammed the tubes of his telescope shut and stored it in the binnacle-rack, ' 'God help the French,' sir. And it was their choice. Run in that close to a piratical shore to escape us? Well, on their heads be it, Mister Spendlove.'

'An' 'ey are Frogs, after all, young sir,' Buchanon reminded the midshipman. 'Like you say, Cap'um… 'God help th' French.' For 'ere's ought we could do for 'em, now, 'thout gettin' dozens o' men o^: our own killed t'save 'em. Poor motherless bastards.'

CHAPTER 3

Captain Benjamin Rodgers, too, was of the opinion of 'God help the French,' and agreed with Lewrie that 'on