Reefs and Shoals (44 page)

The mail, well! After sorting through and filing the important letters, and sending the least important to the quarter gallery for use as toilet paper, Lewrie had had time to savour personal news from home before his captains had come aboard for supper.

There were several from Lydia, all warmly fond, chatty, and informative. Beyond all sense, her brother Percy was going to wed this mid-Summer, though people in Society thought him daft for taking a circus rider like Eudoxia Durschenko for wife! Eudoxia’s evil-looking father, Arslan Artimovich, was already looking yearningly at their vast stables of saddle horses and the racing thoroughbred, and was then at their principal estate, installing himself as Master of Horse!

There were letters from Sir Malcolm Shockley, an old ally in Parliament; his father, Sir Hugo; brother-in-law Burgess Chiswick; and reports from dour Governour Chiswick and his wife Millicent on his daughter, Charlotte’s, progess.

And, one from his youngest son, Hugh, now a Midshipman aboard HMS
Aeneas
under another old friend, Captain Thomas Charlton. That one was most informative, and news that Lewrie could pass along to all of his captains over that supper.
Aeneas
was in the Mediterranean, and a part of Admiral Lord Nelson’s fleet!

That French Admiral Villeneuve had slipped out of Toulon early in the year in a storm, whilst Nelson’s fleet had been loading supplies at Maddalena Bay on Sardinia. They had sailed as far East as Alexandria in Egypt in search of Villeneuve, fearing a second attempt at building a French empire in the Middle East and the Holy Lands, but Villeneuve had slipped
back
into Toulon. By mid-March, they had learned that the French had sailed again, and they had gone as far as Sicily in search of them before hearing that the French had slipped past Gibraltar and were bound for the West Indies.

… fears that Villeneuve’s ultimate Ambition is the Conquest of Jamaica, so we are off, all of us, in hot, pursuit, and Huzzah! I know not if Sewallis in Pegasus is still on the Brest Blockade, but if so, will he feel Envious! We pray earnestly that we catch up the foe and bring him to action!

“One can only hope that Captain Forrester and his brig-sloops do not cross hawses with this Villeneuve on his own, sir,” Richmond had said at supper.

“If he and the first French squadron unite, who knows how many ships of the line that will be,” Lt. Westcott had commented, looking a tad grimmer than was his usual wont.

“The entire French Toulon fleet? What’d that be, I wonder?” Lt. Darling had speculated. “And did he pick up any Spanish ships of the line with him? Twenty, twenty-five sail of the line, and at least half a dozen frigates?”

“If Jamaica’s their intent, the Bahamas will be safe,” Lewrie had told them. “And when Nelson lays into them, so will the rest of the West Indies, perhaps the Med, too, once the French have nothing left.”

“Hear hear!” Lt. Lovett had exclaimed, raising his wine glass on high. “Gentlemen, allow me to give you Nelson, and a bloody battle!”

“Nelson, and victory!” Lt. Bury had soberly amended.

All in all, it had been a cheering supper, but for the dessert, for neither Yeovill nor Cooke had been able to master the receipt for pecan pie, despite their experimentations.

*   *   *

Once
Squirrel
had departed them, the squadron had sailed on out the Northeast Providence Channel, past the lower-most tip of Great Abaco, the Hole-in-the-Wall, then up the Eastern coast past Cherokee Sound, Little Harbour, Hope Town, and Marsh Harbour, the main settlement, and seaward of the chain of cays; Man O’ War, Great Guana, Green Turtle, and Powell Cay, bound for the Northern-most end of the Bahamas where the Little Bahama Bank continued beyond Little Abaco and Fox Town and Walker’s Cay, where lay the East entrance to the inner Bank, Walker’s Cay Channel.

This
should
be good lurkin’ grounds,
Lewrie told himself as the seventh day of their search went on with nothing to show for it.

Ships bound in or out of Nassau had to use either of the Providence Channels, and if one did not have enough ships to watch each of the channels simultaneously, the best bet would be to cruise north of the Little Bahama Bank, making long transits to the East-Sou’east to watch one channel, and to the West-Sou’west to watch the other, with a “hidey-hole” round Walker’s Cay should a warship turn up. It was the very place Lewrie would have chosen, had he been a privateer in search of prey, but … perhaps the French didn’t think like him, he was beginning to doubt.

They had seen several American ships bound for New Providence, or returning to home ports from the island, and had stopped and taken a look at them to ask if they had seen any privateers. Despite his cautions to treat the Yankee Doodles and “Brother Johnathans” with respect, and to eschew the urge to check the
bona fides
of their crewmen to determine if any of them were British, none of them had departed from those encounters happily, even if none of their sailors had been press-ganged. Stopping them for what seemed no cause was irritating enough! Some of the boarding parties reported that they had been accosted with shouts for “Free Trade, and Seamen’s Rights!” no matter how politely they had been handled.

Should he give up this search and head South? he speculated. The pickings for a privateer further down the island chain would be leaner, the prizes almost too small to be worth the effort, if the Prize Courts which served the enemy were as parsimonious as the ones he’d dealt with. Or, by late afternoon, they might put about and go Nor’east round the top of the Little Bahama Bank to do it all over again.

Reliant
was at the North end of a line-abreast patrol line with only four or five miles between ships, with little
Firefly
the closest to the pale green waters of the Bank. The weather was clear and the winds a touch lively, strong enough to mellow the heat. The seas were sparkling, glittering in medium-length waves not over three or four feet in height. All in all, it was a pretty morning, but it didn’t appear as if it would be an eventful one. Lewrie was just about to decide to send down for his deck chair when a lookout shouted down to the deck.

“Signal from
Thorn,
sir!” Midshipman Grainger added from his perch halfway up the larboard shrouds of the main mast.

Lewrie fetched his telescope and peered outward, trying to read it for himself. There was
Thorn
four miles off the larboard beam with a hint of
Lizard
four miles further off, almost hull-down and perched off
Thorn
’s stern, almost masked. She, too, flew the same signal. The
Firefly
was only a tops’l over the horizon, completely masked by HMS
Thorn,
the originator of the alert relayed up the patrol line.

“The hoist is ‘Enemy In Sight’, sir!” Grainger shouted.

Lieutenant Lovett was not the skittish sort; if he said that he could see an enemy ship, then an enemy there was in the offing.

“Mister Spendlove,” Lewrie ordered the officer of the watch, “Beat to Quarters”

“Another signal, sir!” Grainger shouted once more. “Enemy Is A Brig’, and ‘Enemy Is Flying … South’!”

“Mister Eldridge?” Lewrie said, turning to the older Midshipman aft by the taffrail signal-flag lockers. “You’re fluent and fast by now, I trust?”

“I will try, sir,” Eldridge replied.

“This is going t’be complicated,” Lewrie told him, taking one quick look at the chart on the traverse board. “First, a hoist for
Firefly
and
Lizard,
their numbers, for ‘General Chase’, adding ‘Inshore’.” He wished his smaller ships to pursue, slanting toward the Little Bahama Bank to deny that brig a chance to get into shoal water. He hoped that “Inshore”, would convey that desire, and had to trust to Lovett and Bury to want to cut her off.

“Second hoist will be to
Thorn,
” Lewrie explained, waiting impatiently as Eldridge scribbled it down on a scrap of paper. “Her number, and ‘General Chase’, adding ‘Seaward’.”

“I relieve you, sir,” Lt. Westcott told Lt. Spendlove as he gained the quarterdeck in a rush, still fumbling with his coat, sword belt, and hat. He knuckled the brim of his hat in salute, Spendlove replying as casually, before dashing to the waist where the gunners were assembling by their pieces. “We’ve found something, sir?”

“It appears we have, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie told him. “Do you wait ’til the hoists are completed, then shape course Due South to pursue. The Chase is a brig that Lovett deems a foe.”

Lewrie looked aft as the signal halliard blocks squealed. The first signal was soaring aloft to be two-blocked. While Lewrie was waiting for it to be repeated, Pettus came up with the keys to the arms lockers, which Lewrie passed on to Lt. Merriman, and his sword belt, and his pair of double-barreled Manton pistols.

“I’ll see your cats to the orlop, sir,” Pettus promised.

“Have Jessop see to the damned dog, too,” Lewrie ordered.

Thorn
hoisted a repeat of the first signal, and then there was a long wait ’til the mast-head lookouts could report that
Lizard
had made the hoist to
Firefly,
and an even longer wait ’til
Lizard
made a single-flag hoist for “Affirmative” back to
Thorn
and then to the frigate.

This is one hellish-poor way t’speak with each other,
Lewrie thought, regretting that he had spaced his patrol line so far apart;
This command of a squadron, and sendin’ orders and hopin’ for the best, is enough t’tear my hair out! But, if Firefly hadn’t been down South so far, we might’ve missed the Chase altogether.

The blocks were squealing again as the first signal was lowered and the second was hurriedly bent on to the halliards. With commendable despatch, Eldridge got the second one to
Thorn
two-blocked not a minute later. With only four miles between them, Lt. Darling’s ship was quicker to respond with the “Repeat,” and no “Query” or “Submit” to delay the process.

“Strike it, Mister Eldridge,” Lewrie ordered, which was the order for
Thorn
to execute. As soon as
Thorn
whisked her Repeat down, her helm was put over and she wheeled Sutherly, hardening up her gaff sails and bracing round her tops’l and wee royal for drive.

“Alter course, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped.

“Aye aye, sir!”

Reliant
spread more sail aloft, too, braced her square sails and yards for more speed, and hoisted the outer flying jib and both the fore and main topmast stays’ls. She leaned her starboard shoulder to the sea and began to lope South, her forefoot smashing and parting the sea, her hull and masts humming and trembling in haste.

“We might be up level with
Thorn
in an hour,” Lt. Westcott speculated aloud, “though I doubt either of us will be of much help to Lovett and Bury’.”

“The important thing is for us to be
seen
, West of the Banks, so the Chase can’t hope to hare off that way,” Lewrie said, feeling a need to cross his fingers; what he
hoped
to occur could still turn to shambles. “The wee sloops can deny the Chase an escape
into
the Banks, and
Thorn
can loom up in a stern-chase. So long as she’s a brig of average size,
Lizard
and
Firefly,
can catch her up and take her. We’ll be ‘In Sight’ of her taking. Think there’s a penny or two per hand in that, Mister Westcott?” he said with a grin.

“Only if she’s full of solid coin, sir,” Westcott disparaged.

*   *   *

The enemy brig loomed up over the horizon after an hour or two of pursuit, with
Lizard
and
Firefly
visible to the East of her, and closing fast. Lt. Darling was getting a good turn of speed from his brigantine, too, and was several miles ahead of
Reliant,
standing out to the brig’s West, and within what looked to be two miles of her.

“Deck there!” all the mast-head lookouts cried, almost in chorus. “Gunfire!
Lizard
and
Firefly
are engaged!”

Lewrie was so fretful that he slung his telescope over his shoulder and scaled the shrouds of the mizen mast to see what he could see, which wasn’t all that revealing. By then, the enemy and his two smaller sloops were almost hull-up to him, merged together and almost impossible to demarcate one from the other. The sounds of their engagement could not reach his ears, but there was a growing pall of spent gunpowder smoke down yonder. He swung the lens to the West and there was
Thorn,
rapidly closing aslant, still with an eye towards closing the door to any escape towards open water and the inlets of far-off Florida. She had yet to commence fire.

“Deck, there!” the main-mast lookout shouted down. “Chase is bein’ doubled! Bound Sou’west!”

She was trying to get away, trying to get out to deep water, but
Lizard
and
Firefly
were now engaging her on either quarter, maybe on either beam, denying the brig a chance to flee. And, if she did turn away by then, she would lay her vulnerable stern open to a rake from one of the sloops, and a broadside from the other!

“Deck, there!” the lookouts whooped. “Chase has
struck
!”

“Ease helm a bit, Mister Westcott, and lay us about a mile to their lee, and once level with ’em, we’ll fetch to,” Lewrie ordered.