Rapscallion

far away to pick out details.

Lasseur was braced against the port rail, peering through a telescope, shoulders thrust forward. A cheroot was clenched between his teeth. He looked like a wolf scenting prey; a man in his element.

'Home,' he said, following Hawkwood's gaze. 'Mine,' he added. 'Not yours.' He gave a lupine grin.

'How far?'

'Twenty miles, maybe a little less.'

Hawkwood looked over his shoulder. Beyond the stern, the sky was much darker and it was harder to differentiate between sea and land, if there was any land out there.

'There's a sail?' Hawkwood said.

Lasseur nodded. He handed Hawkwood the spyglass and pointed ahead, towards the distant smudge of coast.

'Two miles off the bow.'

Hawkwood wedged his hip against the rail, tried to ignore the water sluicing over his boots, and jabbed the glass to his eye. At first, all he could see was a dark swell of blue-black waves. He lowered the glass, took his bearings, aimed at the band of light coming up over the bow and tried again. He bit back a curse as the eyeglass slipped once more, but his perseverance was rewarded when suddenly a dark, angular silhouette slid across his line of sight. The vessel was low down, running close-hauled on a port tack, her fore- and aft-rigged canvas braced tight.

'I see it!' He felt a surge of excitement move through him. 'Morgan?' He passed the telescope to Jago.

'She's a cutter,' Lasseur announced confidently. 'And Gravelines lies almost dead ahead of us. It will be dawn in an hour. We'll know for certain then.'

'She's not showing any colours,' Jago muttered, peering through the glass. The telescope looked very small in his hands.

'Neither are we,' Lasseur pointed out, taking the glass back and stealing another look. 'If they've seen us, which they may not have done, they'll be wondering who we are, though they might guess from our rig that we're not a British ship. The British don't have many schooners. Some of the ones they do have were captured from us, but they're nothing like Scorpion, so he's probably not too concerned at the moment. That gives us the edge.'

Hawkwood looked up. The schooner, like the cutter, seemed to be carrying a huge amount of sail for her size; Lasseur's Barbary rig. He peered over the side at the water rushing past the hull. The ship was slicing through the swells like a knife. Spray burst over the bow. The sense of speed was exhilarating, and as the eastern sky turned from reddish-brown to golden orange, and as the coastline drew ever nearer, Scorpion continued to overhaul her quarry.

The three men remained at the rail. Hawkwood was impressed at the speed with which the schooner was bridging the gap. In no time at all, it seemed, the cutter was barely three cables ahead of them. The sky had grown considerably lighter and he could see figures moving about her deck.

'If she didn't know we were interested in her before, I'd say she does now,' Lasseur said. He raised the telescope. 'Batards!'' He swore suddenly and handed Hawkwood the glass.

Hawkwood's first wild thought was that they had been following the wrong boat. Then a black-painted hull swam into the foreground; increased in size now, but still dwarfed by the spread of her canvas. Hawkwood remembered Gadd's description of the Sea Witch. He searched for a name on her counter, but the jolly boat suspended from the cutter's narrow stern obscured his view. Three men stood by the rail at her starboard quarter, close to the tiller man, staring back towards the Scorpion. Two of them were wearing blue coats and white breeches. When Hawkwood saw the third man standing between them, the boat's name became irrelevant. Tall and grey-bearded, the man was holding a telescope to his face with one hand: his right.

Pepper.

And then as Hawkwood and Lasseur watched, the three men separated. Activity on the cutter's deck suddenly took on a new urgency.

'Jesus, they're running out bloody guns,' Hawkwood cursed as the cutter's crew began to remove canvas sheets from the cannons that lined the sides of the cutter's hull. Six in all, from what he could see, three to each side. He handed the telescope back to Lasseur, who took another look.

'Merde!'

'What are they?' Hawkwood asked. He wasn't well versed in the bore sizes of naval ordnance. As if it mattered. Cannon were still bloody cannon.

'What you would call six-pounders, from their look. Your Revenue uses them. They're accurate to about two hundred and fifty yards, with the right elevation. Fortunately, we have the advantage. We've got more of them.'

The possibility that the Sea Witch would be carrying heavy armament had not occurred to Hawkwood. He'd assumed that Morgan and his men would be equipped with small arms; swivel guns at a pinch - indeed, he had seen one mounted on the cutter's bow - but not carriage guns, though the carronade used in the storming of the residency should have been warning enough. He wondered how well versed they were in combat at sea. It wasn't that much of a leap to suppose that Morgan would have some gunners among the ranks of the former seamen that he employed.

Lasseur was clearly surprised, too. He spun away. 'Tous les marins sur le pont!'

A bell began to clang loudly. The deck echoed to the volley of pounding feet.

Scorpion rose on the swell and plunged forward.

'Preparez les canons!'

Within seconds, sand had been laid down, guns run out, personal weapons distributed, and neck cloths transferred to the men's right arms. As Lasseur explained, his crew knew each other, but everyone, especially Hawkwood and Jago, had to be able to identify friend from foe. A split second's hesitation could mean the difference between life and death.

'You definitely plannin' on boardin' her, then?' Jago asked, running his thumb down a cutlass blade as Lasseur passed Hawkwood a pistol and tomahawk.

'I doubt Morgan will surrender to a hail,' Lasseur said grimly.

Her crew primed and at their stations, Scorpion swept on.

The cutter, now less than a cable's length off the bow, started wearing to port. Her sails flapped as her bow turned through the wind, then the canvas filled quickly as her sheets were pulled taut. She looked, Hawkwood thought, strikingly top heavy.

Lasseur barked out orders. The nautical jargon meant nothing to Hawkwood. Lasseur might just as well have been yelling in Chinese. But as men hauled eagerly on ropes, reducing canvas, and as the helmsman swung the wheel hard over, it was clear that the privateer was attempting to match the cutter's manoeuvre. Scorpion began to come round.

There was a distant bang and a puff of smoke appeared on the cutter's deck, then a waterspout erupted five yards off the schooner's starboard quarter.

Someone cheered derisively.

Lasseur snorted contemptuously and yelled at his first officer to fire on the up roll.

Hawkwood remembered being told that English gunners generally fired on the down roll so that any delay would cause the ball to bounce off the water and ricochet into the enemy's hull. French gun crews usually aimed for the rigging. As a consequence, the French tended to suffer greater casualties. Hawkwood knew the last thing Lasseur wanted was to sink the cutter, especially given the cargo she was carrying, so in aiming at the cutter's rig the privateer was following tradition. Hawkwood tried not to think about the rest of it.

As Scorpion's starboard rail swept past the cutter's tapered stern, Delon dropped his arm.

The gunner hauled back on the lanyard and the explosion took Hawkwood by surprise. It was sharper and louder than he had expected, more an ear-splitting crack than a roar. The sound pierced his brain like a skewer and he saw Jago flinch beside him.

Hawkwood looked for the fall of the shot and saw nothing.