The Guardship

And get to it they did, for during the time that the Plymouth Prize had ridden at her anchor waiting for the convoy to assemble, Marlowe had drilled them again and again until they could carry out his plan with no thought at all, which was all the thought he wanted from them.

They clewed up the sails and the guardship stopped dead in her wake, then they raced forward and aloft. First they struck the spritsail topsail yard, then pulled the little spritsail topmast out of the trestle trees at the far end of the bowsprit and let it hang from a tangle of rigging in a most unsightly fashion.

They did much the same to the fore topgallant mast and yard, and left them both hanging high over the deck in a great mess of rope and spar and canvas. It took less than ten minutes,

and in that time they had managed to create an impressive amount of wreckage aloft.

They reset topsails just as the last of the line of tobacco ships passed them, leaving them behind, a damaged vessel unable to keep station, bucking in the small chop churned up by the fleet’s passing.

From the deck Marlowe could just make out the Sarah and Kate through his glass. Rakestraw had her right on station, a glory of bunting waving in the morning breeze. And to leeward of her, in two great columns, sailing large with all plain sail set, was the tobacco fleet, running their easting down.

But the pirates would not be interested in a close-packed, well-armed and -escorted convoy. Not when there was a single merchantman wallowing astern, her spritsail topmast and fore top-gallant mast and yard obviously carried away in some collision in the dark. The convoy and the man-of-war would leave her to her fate; they could not stop for one ship.

“Those gentlemen who are designated ladies, pray get in your dresses,” Marlowe called down into the waist.

Bickerstaff was silent as he stared at the wreckage aloft. At last he spoke. “This is a dangerous game you play, Marlowe. Have you thought it well out?”

“I have. I cannot imagine that they will attack an escorted convoy when-”

“No, not that. I mean this game of capturing pirates.” He glanced around the quarterdeck. They were alone on the weather side, and only the helmsmen and the quartermaster were to leeward and they were out of earshot. “Have you considered what will happen if one of them should recognize you?”

“I have. I have considered it well,” Marlowe lied. The truth was that he had not really considered it at all. He had only some vague thought that anyone who might recognize him would be killed in battle, or put to the sword afterward. “I cannot imagine that anyone would believe the word of a pirate, particularly one with so obvious a reason to want to sully my good name.”

“Perhaps. But proof is not always necessary to ruin one’s good name. That was true in London, and I find it is doubly true in the colonies. The mere suggestion of something untoward is often enough.”

“Well, then,” Marlowe said with a forced smile, “let us see that any such a person is killed in battle. But recall that it has been some time, and these people do not tend to live so long.”

“Perhaps” was all that Bickerstaff said.

For the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon the convoy sailed on and the pirate closed with them. Marlowe took a glass and climbed up into the maintop and from there scanned the horizon and scrutinized the approaching vessel. It was not unusual for a pirate to have two or three ships, but that villain had only one. A big one, to be sure, bigger than average, but still only one.

Once the pirates had closed to within a mile or so of the convoy, Rakestraw crowded sail onto the Sarah and Kate and charged after them, an enraged bull going after the dog that had wandered into his field. Ensigns and banners and jacks of all description flew from various parts of her rig and Rakestraw fired great guns right and left, making quite a show of it, though he had no hope of hitting anything. He was not really trying to. He just wanted the pirates to know whom they should avoid.

“Ladies, come along, we need you aft,” Marlowe shouted down the scuttle to the half-dozen young men who were quite purposely procrastinating about getting into their dresses. This set the tribe laughing and hollering, as Marlowe knew it would. It was cruel of him to tease them thus, and he knew it, particularly as they were only following his orders, but it helped to ease the building tension on the Prize’s deck. Besides, Marlowe enjoyed a good laugh as much as any man before the mast.

At last, to many a cheer and off-color suggestion, the six men sauntered aft and the guardship’s disguise was complete. Marlowe ordered up the rum.

“On deck! Pirate’s sheered off from the convoy!”

“Very good,” Marlowe called aloft, then swung his glass outboard. The pirate ship, which had been closing with the convoy, had hauled her wind, running from the great bluster being made by Mr. Rakestraw and the Sarah and Kate. “I’ll reckon they see easier pickings,” he said to Bickerstaff.

“Mr. Middleton,” he turned to the acting first officer, “let us have a couple of men out on the bowsprit pretending to repair that spritsail topmast and a few more aloft pretending to work on the topgallant gear.”

“Aye, sir.”

Marlowe looked around the deck. The Prizes had finished quaffing their liquid courage. “Mr. Bickerstaff, you’ll see to our defense?”

“I should be delighted.”

Bickerstaff rounded up the men and positioned them in accordance to the plan they had devised. Marlowe found it quite amusing to watch him, in his fussy, pendantic way, enlighten the crew as to how best they could slaughter a murderous enemy. But the men had come to respect Bickerstaff, thanks in part to the fine drills in sword and pistol that he offered, but due mostly to his timely arrival and hard fighting at Smith Island.

As demurely as the schoolchildren with whom Bickerstaff had spent a majority of his adult life, the men of the Plymouth Prize loaded pistols and sharpened cutlasses and readied the great guns for that first, crucial broadside. All but two of the cannon, lardboard and starboard, were loaded with grapeshot, and over that was packed nails, broken glass, odd bits of iron, whatever potentially lethal projectile could be found.

In the same manner they loaded the six small cannon, called falconets, mounted on the rail. Then the men squatted down behind the high bulwark, out of sight, and waited to be attacked.

“Listen here,” Marlowe shouted down to the men in the waist. “When these sons of bitches come up with us they’ll no doubt be making some noise, yelling and banging swords and chanting and such. They call it ‘vaporing,’ and it can be damn

frightening, but it’s only noise, d’ya hear? Don’t let it unnerve you, because it means they’re all crowded on the bulwarks, which is what we want.”

Rakestraw hauled his wind and rejoined the convoy ten minutes after the pirate ship had sheered off. A minute after that the pirate wore around and turned his bow toward the Plymouth Prize. They looked as if they might tip over for all of the canvas they had aloft, and they closed quickly with their chosen victim.

“Very good, Mr. Bickerstaff. First gun, if you please.”

“Aye, sir,” Bickerstaff called, and relayed the order to the gun captain of the forwardmost gun on the starboard side. The captain touched off the powder in the touch hole, and the gun went off with a roar.

The pirate ship, though coming up fast, was still out of range of even a long cannon shot, and the ball plunged into the ocean one hundred feet short. Then the gun crew slowly reloaded and fired again, creating the illusion that the Plymouth Prize did not have enough men to fire more than one gun at a time, and that none too quickly.

Marlowe smiled and shook his head. The guardship would appear as pathetic and weak as a lost lamb, firing her round shot into the sea. And there was nothing that wolves loved more than a pathetic and weak lost lamb.

A quarter mile away the pirates opened up with as much broadside as would bear. Round shot whistled through the rigging and one or two even slammed into the Prize’s hull, but there was little damage done and no one was hurt. The pirates did not want to sink their victim. That was the last thing they wanted. What they hoped to do was frighten their victim into surrender.

And it seemed to be working, for the men crouching behind the bulwarks were starting to get wide-eyed, their fear all the greater for their not being able to see the enemy.

They might even have panicked had it not been for Bickerstaff, strolling casually up and down the deck, giving them word of what was happening and reminding them of their duty.

He would do well to remind them of the riches that they might win, Marlowe thought, but Bickerstaff was not