Sea of Grey

West Indies were still to come, if they were allowed ashore to sample the foods, the ale-houses and taverns… and the women. Their days were filled from sunrise to sunset with the usual labours, such as re-roving the rigging, tautening the standing stays every other day, one side at a time after wearing from larboard to starboard tack off the wind, when the lee side would have a little more slack to work with; taking down the storm-canvas and stowing them below, after the sailmaker and his crew had patched, darned, and sewn frayed seams; hoisting aloft and bending on the lighter, everyday set of sails. And, of course, there were the unending drills during the Forenoon Watch; running-in, mock-loading, running-out, and firing the great-guns, carronades, and swivels, with a weekly live shoot at a jettisoned keg or chicken coop; cutlass drill and boarding pike drill to keep their skills sharp and give them some additional exercise; a turn at live musketry at over-side targets, even practice with horrid Sea Pattern pistols that were only considered accurate when jammed in a foeman's belly and triggered off; striking top-masts to the deck in quick order, then hoisting them back aloft, preparing for the day when a raging West Indies hurricane might overtake their ship, and the topmasts would have to be lowered for survival-or the day when enemy fire might dismast them, and victory or defeat might hinge upon how quickly spare top-masts and spars could be deployed.

And, when all that was done, there was grog, a turn at a water-butt, the galley funnel spuming a partly homesick aroma of wood smoke and

boiling meat: the smells of soups or pease puddings as the sun declined, as a country cottage or town worker's humble lodgings smelled at sundown, when the day's pay had been collected, an ale or two had been drunk at one's favourite local pub among fellow workers and neighbourhood friends, at the end of the loose-hipped, mellow stroll on the high street or side lane that led to family, wife… and home.

Weary, aye… mostly satisfied with their lot for the moment, some a trifle 'groggy' as usual, each dusk they still had the spirit to open their voices in rough tune, revive the sentimental, lachrymose airs that sailors liked best of all… and sing the sun down.

' Toulon, don't leave yer mark on the hammock nettings! Sailors have t'sleep on those things!' Lewrie admonished his ram-cat, perched on the canvas-covered bulwark of tightly rolled hammocks, overlooking the ship's waist. He gave him a neck-tousling pet, then strolled up to the windward side, plucking at his shirt. One more sign that they were in the tropics; the day's heat that had been welcome at first, was now nigh punishing, more glaring, and the prismatic flashes of sunlight off the sea were now more like a field of too-bright snow that gave everyone a perpetual squint.

Lewrie turned to face inward, once he had taken hold of a mizen stay and given it a tug to test its tautness, taking note of Dowe, one of the quartermaster's mates serving his 'trick' at the wheel. He was an American, the son of a long-dead Loyalist who had fled to Nova Scotia at the Revolution's end. Dowe lowered his gaze from the draw of the sails and eased his own squint, raising his brows for a moment, which made Lewrie smile. With a face at ease, Dowe showed white, untanned streaks round his eyes and on his forehead that squinting kept as pale as a lady's thighs… 'them raccoon eyes, sir,' Dowe had termed them, Lewrie recalled, making him chuckle, too. He thought he had seen one when HMS Desperate had put into Charleston back in '81, and he was sure he had eaten a raccoon when besieged and half-starved at Yorktown with Lord Cornwallis's doomed army. Either way, Lewrie thought the description apt.

'Sail ho!' the main-mast lookout screeched from the cross-trees.

'Where away?' Lt. Wyman yelled back, his hands cupped about his mouth, though that was little help for his thinnish voice.

'One point off th' larboard bows! Hull down! A schooner!'

'Well, about time, too!' Lewrie muttered, pleased.

They had proved that the ocean was a huge, empty place on their voyage, for even though they had steered Proteus Sou'westerly nigh to the latitude of Dominica, and across the most-used track for any merchant ships, this would only be the second ship they had encountered. Most merchant masters bore on South from Cape St. Vincent to Dominica's latitude, then ran it due West-they only had to solve their slight variation in latitude, daily, and calculate longitude by adding up the 24-hour sums from their knot-logs, by Dead Reckoning. And if all else failed them, the cloud-swept peaks of Dominica were the tallest marks in the Caribbean, damned hard to miss for even the most lubberly, cack-handed navigator-like the master of the only other ship that they had 'spoken,' a reeking Portugee 'blackbirder' laden with a cargo of three-hundred-odd slaves fresh from Dahomey, and so creaky and slow it appeared that at least a quarter of those forlorn souls would die before arrival; the damned fool had actually asked Lewrie where, exactly, they were!

Here though, within two days' sail of English Harbour, Antigua, the presence of local shipping could be expected. English Harbour was a Royal Navy station, a safe place for overseas trade, as well. This schooner, Lewrie surmised, was most-like a local. Schooners were popular craft in the West Indies, fore-and-aft rigged to go like a witch to windward, and 'point' at least ten-to-twelve degrees closer to the winds, a desirable trait did one desire to beat back eastward against the unvarying Nor'east Trades. Some adventurous types sailed schooners from as far north as Maine, in the Americas. And schooners made hellish good privateers, too, due to their speed and agility!

'Mister Elwes, aloft with a glass, sir. Tell us what you see,' Lieutenant Wyman snapped.

'Aye aye, sir!' the eager young midshipman piped back, dashing to the rack by the binnacle cabinet to seize a telescope, then scampering up the weather mizen shrouds as spryly as a monkey.

'Should we clear for action, sir?' Wyman asked.

'Not quite yet, Mister Wyman,' Lewrie demurred. 'Hull-down, on such a clear day, means she's ten miles off or more. Plenty of time to 'smoak' her. Unless she runs, of course.'

'Hoy, the deck!' Midshipman Elwes cried down. 'Schooner rigged, and flying no flag! Sailing abeam the wind, to the Nor'Nor'west!'

'I do, however, desire that we harden up to the wind, sir, and cut the angle on her. Make our course… West by North. Shake out those first reefs in the t'gallants, and stand by, should we need the royals,' Lewrie said, after a peek at the compass.

Lewrie took a telescope of his own and ambled back to the windward rail, braced himself on the mizen stays, and eyed their stranger. The merest sliver of her uppermost hull sometimes loomed up above the horizon as a distant swell lifted her; in another moment, she would be swallowed, leaving only the upper part of her sails visible.

Damme, is she foreshortening? he asked himself with a frown. 'Deck, there!' Mr. Elwes called. 'Chase is hauling her wind… turning West-Nor'west! Chase is hoisting gaff stays'ls!'

Foreshortening, aye; showing Proteus her sternquarters. Mr. Elwes might be presumptive in calling her a Chase, but that turn gave Lewrie a premonitory thrill.

'Has she shown any colours yet, Mister Elwes?' Lewrie queried. 'None, sir!'

Lewrie rubbed his unshaven chin, ideas percolating. Even were she British, or neutral and innocent as anything, fear of the French privateers might make a ship run from a strange vessel, one that looked lean and fast like a ship of war, but…

Did the schooner continue West-Nor'west, she could just shave by the northern coast of Antigua, and would be on a perfect course to duck into 'neutral' waters in the Danish Virgins, near St. Croix, though by sunset Proteus could surely run her down, with her longer waterline and her much larger sail area.

Or the schooner might try to come about, rounding Antigua, and head Sutherly for St. Kitts. In Antigua 's lee, schooners were two-a-penny, and by full dark she might hope to escape in the gloom, letting another similar schooner be the goat.

Proteus slowly swung onto her new course, her decks heeled over more to leeward as the press of wind on her reset sails made her start to race and surge. She was after a 'Chase'; and like a staghound on a firm spoor, like a tiger pacing an Indian millet field after an addled goat, she strode out confidently, surely. Off-watch crewmen were drawn to the deck by the commotion, all but licking their chops in anticipation of a prize.

'This isn't a cockfight, lads!' Lewrie had to shout. 'There's gun-drill to perform. Keep yer eyes in-board, and your minds on your evolutions… 'fore the Bosun and Master Gunner pass among you, with their… reminders?'

Even so, Lewrie knew, the hands would whisper among themselves, try peeking over the gangways or out the windward gun-ports; men aloft would find a way to send the latest observations down to their mateys, no matter