The French Admiral

halfway into the day watch before they caught up with the fleet, but before then, not even an errant cloud on the horizon could be mistaken for a tops'l.

'Fall out the hands from quarters, Mister Railsford.' Treghues gave the order from the quarterdeck nettings overlooking the waist of the upper deck. 'Pipe the hands to breakfast.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

'Excuse me, sir, but who is midshipman of the watch?' Alan asked Railsford.

'You had the middle?'

'Aye, sir, both of us. And we shall have the forenoon as well.'

'Get you below and eat, then,' Railsford said. 'Might as well get into working rig, too, or your shoregoing clothes are going to get too dirty.'

They stumbled down to the lower deck and aft, past the marine compartment to their tiny midshipman's mess, which was right forward of the master's cabin and the first lieutenant's. Young Carey was there already, digging into a bowl of gruel liberally mixed with salt meat and crumbled biscuit, slurping at his small beer with evident enjoyment. His eyes lit up as he saw them, not having had the chance to ask them how much trouble they had gotten into.

Midshipman the Honorable Francis Forrester was also there, round and glowing even though the morning was still cool, and also busily feeding. Cater-cousin to their captain, one of the original midshipmen from her commissioning, nephew to their squadron flag officer, Sir George Sinclair; an airily superior young swine they could have gladly dropped over the side on a dark night.

'I had hoped you had stayed in whatever sink or stew you had discovered in Charlestown,' he said between bites. 'Was it worth it?'

'We had a wondrous meal the like of which you would have considered a snack,' David told him, stripping out of his good uniform. 'We drank some rather good wine, and then we repaired to a most exclusive buttock shop and rantipoled about until we had exhausted their entire stable.'

'Don't waste a description of the women on him, Avery,' Alan said as he dug into his chest for working-rig quality uniform items. 'Didn't you know that Francis is still an innocent in that regard? Come to think on it, I cannot remember ever seeing evidence of his manhood, and there's not a scrap of privacy in this mess.'

'Well, from what I hear, you'll be paying the price for your little escapade,' Francis retorted hotly, but unwilling to try his arm against the two of them—they had bloodied his nose more than once in the past. 'Hope you enjoy watch and watch. Hope you like watching me enjoy a good bottle of wine while you sip your water.'

'You're a swine, Francine,' David said. 'A portly sow with two teats.'

'Goddamn you!' Forrester roared, almost ready to rise, in spite of past experience.

'Blaspheme a little more softly, please,' Alan said. 'Before the captain decides to share the misery out. He's not in the best of moods today. Come to it, neither am I, so watch yourself and walk small about us.'

They sat down to their bowls of mush, and the mess steward set out a pitcher of water before them, eyeing them with a certain sadness.

'Have a heart, Freeling,' Alan entreated. 'Slip some small beer our way, won't you?'

'Oh, ah god a 'eart, Meester Lewrie, zur, bud iffen ah dew, ah won' 'ave no 'ead when 'a capum 'ear of eet,' Freeling responded.

'Bloody hell!' David said, taking a sip. 'At least it's not wiggling today.'

'Not even half brown. A good vintage,' said Alan.

It was around three bells of the day watch, just after gunnery exercises, that Desperate caught sight of the fleet on the horizon to the north-east, after a good sail north along the coast with a soldier's wind. They were now roughly parallel with Cape Fear, slanting landward at a shallow angle to eventual landfall at Cape Henry and the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, to peek in and see if the French had arrived.

Alan was in the rigging with a telescope, clinging to the shrouds with arm and knee crooked, leaning back onto the ratlines just below where the futtock shrouds began below the maintop.

Well, no one's sunk while we were gone, he decided, counting the ships. There was Admiral Drake's small group of ships up from St. Lucia, now free of keeping guard on the French base in Martinique and very far from familiar waters; there was Princessa, the flagship, Terrible, Ajax, Intrepid, Alcide, and Shrewsbury. Further north he could espy Admiral Hood's flag flying on Barfleur; also Invincible, the Alfred, Belliqueux, Monarch, Centaur, Montagu, and Resolution riding in her wake. Fourteen sail of the line all told, and too few attendant frigates, as was usual. If the rumors were correct, and de Grasse had brought fourteen sail out of Port de France and had not picked up other ships at Cape Francois or Havana, then they would be evenly matched ship for ship in line of battle once they fell on their enemy.

It was so large a problem that his own paled in comparison, and he knew that he was looking forward to the battle with a certain relish, at that time in the uncertain future when upwards of thirty massive warships would come up within pistol shot of each other and begin to blaze away with every gun available.

Alan had seen single-ship actions since being almost press-ganged into the Navy, and such events as a fleet battle happened too rarely to be missed. He knew he had an extremely good chance to survive it, if it did occur, since frigates would not stand in the line of battle, but would be in the wings, repeating signal hoists and ready to rush down and aid some crippled larger ship. This battle, if it came soon, would truly decide the fate of the rebellion. Without the French fleet, there wasn't a ship on the coast that could stand up to the Royal Navy, and the blockade of their coast could check the last imports and exports that kept their miserable efforts in the field. This would be the crushing blow, and when it was over, everyone on the losing side would sue for peace, and Alan could go home to England. Maybe not to London, not as long as his father was alive. But he could take off naval uniform and begin to live the life of a gentleman once more, so he had a personal stake in victory and frankly, could not even begin to imagine any other result.

Then, no matter what career was open to him after getting out of the Navy—which had treated him so abominably—he could brag for the rest of his life that he had, by God, been there! Sword in hand, making every shot count, eye-to-eye with the Frogs, pistoling mounseers right and left, or whatever else his imagination could do to enliven an observer's role as the tale grew with the telling.

I'll probably bore some people to tears with it. He laughed. There I was, hanging upside down from the clew garnets, four third-rates on either beam! Harro for England and St. George and pass the bloody port if you're through with it! And the best part of it all is, I'll be safe as bloody houses for a change, instead of scared fartless.

Unwinding his limbs from his precarious perch, Alan clambered down to the starboard bulwarks along the gangway and jumped the last few feet to move back aft to the quarterdeck, where Treghues, Railsford, and Monk were plying their own telescopes to survey the immense power spread before them.

'Still fourteen of the line, sir,' Alan said to Railsford.

'Be more than that when we reach New York.' Railsford grinned at him. 'Admiral Graves can add at least seven more, plus frigates. We shall have this Count de Grasse on a plate, mark my words.'

'Mister Railsford, signal the flag there was no sign of the French at Charlestown.'

'Mister Forrester!' Railsford bellowed.

'Sir?' Forrester called, running from the taffrail flag lockers.

'Signal 'negative contact.' Make sure Princessa or one of the repeating frigates replies with a matching signal.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

The signal system, even with special contingencies included by Admiral Rodney before he departed the Indies, was meager almost to the point of muteness. Many signals were guns fired either to windward or leeward, ensigns hoisted from various masts, perhaps a certain colored fusee burning after dark. There were only so many signal flags, and each had a meaning mostly laid down in the Fighting Instructions, so anything that did not do with bloody battle took some ingenuity to convey. Usually it resulted in such confusion that ships sidled down to speak to each other at close range anyway, and captains developed their lungs by shouting and bawling at each other through speaking trumpets, making their choler permanent.

Today was no exception. A red ensign hoisted from the windward foremast, and a blue signal flag at the gaff