The Invasion Year Page 14

  Bang! of a musket stock; Slam-slam of the Marine sentry’s boots, and a louder-than-normal shout of, “Midshipman Houghton, SAH!”

  “Enter?” Lewrie bade, cocking an ear to the sounds of the ship and not liking what he heard. Bosun’s calls were already shrilling.

  “Mister Spendlove’s duty, sir, and there’s a strange ship attacking the lee columns! Cockerel’s fired off signal rockets!”

  “Here’s your excitement, Mister Simcock!” Lewrie said, rising quickly and dashing his napkin to the deck. “All hands, and beat to Quarters!”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The night was black as a boot, but sprinkled with the fire-fly tiny gleams from taffrail lanthorns, gleams that seemed to be swinging more Easterly as the leeward columns of merchant ships shied from the threat of a raider in their midst. The Cockerel frigate was filling the air with up-swooshing pinpricks of bright amber lights of warning rockets, and her main-mast’s upper-most tip showed a series of fusees burning bright blue in a diamond pattern. As Lewrie gained the deck, Cockerel fired off two guns, their discharges eyeblink spurts of white powder smoke, shot through with amber and yellow.

  “Is she taking something under fire?” Lt. Spendlove was worrying aloud.

  “Making the ‘General’ signal to the convoy, more like, sir,” Midshipman Houghton commented as a Marine drummer began the Long Roll.

  “Mister Westcott?” Lewrie called out.

  “Aye, sir?”

  “Steer Due North for the convoy’s larboard quarter, and crack on sail,” Lewrie ordered.

  “Very good, sir. Quartermasters, come about to Due North. Mister Spendlove, I relieve you,” Westcott snapped, drawing a breath for his next shout to the brace-tenders on either gangway.

  “Aye, and thank you, sir,” Spendlove said before dashing to his post at Quarters in the waist to supervise the guns.

  Reliant rode the ink-black seas on a beam wind at that moment, rising and surging forward, then sloughing into a wave trough and butting through with a brief loss of momentum. The frigate trembled with what felt like a stallion’s impatience at the start-line of a race as off-watch sailors thundered up from their mess and berthing deck for their posts, some in shoes but most unshod. Gun tools were dealt out, the arms chests were unlocked—that took a moment, for Lewrie had come to the quarterdeck without the keys, and had to send Pettus to fetch them—and the dull red battle lanthorns were lit down each battery, between the guns, reflecting hellish-eerie from the tubs of swabbing water. Even more tiny lights flickered to life as the slow-match fuses were coiled round the tops of the tubs and the ends lit to ignite the primer quills, should the newer flintlock strikers fail.

  “Cast off your guns!” Lt. Spendlove was loudly ordering as the hands mustered by their pieces.

  “Your sword and pistols, sir?” Pettus asked from behind Lewrie, almost making him jump.

  “Pistols’ll be more useful tonight, Pettus,” Lewrie told him. “If there’s need t’board anything, I’ll snatch up a spare cutlass.”

  “Be back in a trice, sir, then I’ll see the cats to the orlop,” Pettus promised, then ghosted away at a dash for the great-cabins.

  As Reliant altered course, the convoy’s many lights swung away to starboard even quicker, tautening up to the wind at “full and by” to beat their way to weather, and safety.

  “God, just look at ’em!” Lewrie muttered, groaning. “As bad as a flock o’ witless sheep!”

  The somewhat orderly columns that had stretched ahead of Reliant when she had sailed along astern of them were now seen from a new angle, and what Lewrie could see wasn’t pretty. Viewed from the convoy’s larboard quarter, and all ships scurrying away, he could make out no order to it, and was put in mind of the thousands of floating lotuses and tiny oil lamps wafting down the Hooghly river during some Hindoo festival when he had been at Calcutta, so long ago.

  “The ship is at Quarters, sir,” Lt. Westcott crisply reported a minute later, all his earlier gaiety vanished.

  “Very well, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie replied. “Now, does anyone see anything out there?” He put his hands on his hips and looked up to the mizen and the main fighting tops, which were now manned by spry younger topmen, sharpshooters, Marines, and lookouts.

  “Aloft, there! Sing out, do you spot something!” Lt. Westcott shouted to them with a speaking-trumpet.

  Lewrie walked to the forward edge of the quarterdeck for a look-see of his own. There was the gaggle of the convoy to starboard, and there was Captain Stroud’s Cockerel a mile or so off the larboard bows, and there was a set of lights that he took for Captain Parham’s Pylades much further off, fine on the starboard bows, but … other than those he could make out nothing.

  “Deuced odd, sir,” Lewrie heard the Sailing Master say to Lieutenant Westcott. “How could a privateer or frigate approach from alee? Windward’s the preferred method.”

  “Is our raider a big, fast schooner, Mister Caldwell, striking from loo’rd, though, she’d be knots faster than any of the tubs we’re guarding, and can go much closer to the eyes of the wind. A schooner could come up to us, close-hauled.”

  “Your pistols, sir,” Pettus announced as he popped up, ghostly-like, once more. “Primed and loaded.”

  “Thankee, Pettus,” Lewrie said, like to jump out of his skin, again as he accepted his double-barrelled pistols and stuck them onto the waistband of his breeches by the spring clips.

  How the Hell does he do that? Lewrie wondered as Pettus vanished into the dark.

  “Deck, there!” a lookout on the foremast shouted. “Cockerel’s turnin’ t’windward!”

  Lewrie peered and squinted forward; sure enough, he could make out a change in Cockerel’s lights. Her taffrail lanthorns were coming together, the starboard one overlapping the laboard, and the distance between her stern lights and her main-mast fusees becoming greater. By the glow of her fusees, he could barely spot some of her upper sail canvas.

  “Whatever’s out there, it’s got past her,” Lewrie barked. “And to windward of us! Harden up to windward, Mister Westcott. Lay her head Nor’east, again!”

  We’re a mile up to windward more than Cockerel, Lewrie schemed, hoping that Reliant might stumble upon whatever Stroud had discovered, first; If there’s a privateer ’tween us and the convoy …

  “Deck, there!” the main-mast lookout shouted this time. “Signal rockets to starboard! Rockets, four points off the starboard bows!”

  “Make for the ship launching rockets, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie snapped.

  “Aye, sir!” the First Officer replied. Lt. Westcott pointed out to the Nor’east as he spotted the merchantman in distress. “Thus, Quartermaster!” he directed the helmsmen, chopping his hand to indicate the course. “Harden up for a close reach, Bosun!”

  Reliant turned up closer to the winds, her yards braced up for more speed, and the decks canting over to leeward a few more degrees. Barely had she settled on the new course than the lookouts raised the alarm again. More distress rockets were being launched by other ships … further up to the Nor’east!

  “Two of ’em, damn their eyes!” Lewrie snapped, pounding a fist on the cross-deck railings. “That’un’ll be Cockerel’s pigeon. We can only deal with the one off our bows.”

  And, since the convoy had turned away to flee so precipitously, the merchant ship that Lewrie could aid was more than a mile away, and if she had let fly all her canvas, it would take Reliant more than half an hour to catch her, and the raider, up!

  “She’s not firing any more rockets,” Mr. Caldwell commented. “I expect she’s run out of them, by now.”

  “Or, she’s taken, sir,” Lt. Westcott speculated.

  “Whoops, I was wrong!” the Sailing Master said. “There’s more!”

  “From the same ship … or yet another one?” Lewrie wondered in rising frustration. “There’s so many stern lights, it’s hard to tell which one launched them … which one’s launching now!”

  “Poor Modeste,” Le
wrie heard Midshipman Houghton snigger. “She will be no help at all.”

  “Aye, Mister Houghton,” Caldwell agreed, chuckling a bit, too. “She’s not so much leading the stampede as she is being chased!”

  “And can’t come about without the risk of colliding with one of them … or causing a whole series of collisions,” the Midshipman further supposed.

  “That won’t do Captain Blanding’s choler any good, sir,” Lieutenant Westcott, standing closer to Lewrie, muttered.

  “It wouldn’t do mine any good either, Mister Westcott!” Lewrie replied, wryly grinning and shaking his head. “I expect we’ll hear all about it, come tomorrow.”

  “Hark … gunfire, sir!” Westcott said of a sudden, head lifted as if sniffing the air like a hound.

  No one aloft or on deck had seen the gun flashes, and the sound came down seconds later, after the flashes guttered out.

  “Where away, the gunfire?” Lewrie yelled aloft, but no one had a clue.

  “I think it came from larboard, sir … up to the North of us,” Westcott said with his head cocked over in puzzlement, and shrugging. “Among the stragglers from the lee-most column, most-like.”

  “Gunfire!” a lookout cried at last. “Deck, there! Gun flashes t’larboard … two points off th’ larboard bows!”

  “I see it, sir!” Midshipman Houghton cried. “There, sirs! One of the leading ships of the lee column!”

  That was even further away than the two merchantmen that they’d seen firing distress rockets, making Lewrie frown in concern.

  “Damme, could there be three privateers out there?” he griped. “If there are, let’s hope that Parham and Pylades are close enough to help her.”

  “Pray Jesus we get to grips with somebody!” Marine Lt. Simcock fretted from his place by the starboard entry-port on the sail-tending gangway, where a file of his Marines stood swaying with their muskets ready and loaded.

  “We’ll try t’find you some amusement, sir!” Lewrie snapped back.

  “Sorry, sir,” Simcock all but whispered, much abashed.

  * * *

  It took nearly that estimated half an hour to catch up with the trailing ships of the fleeing convoy, and to get close enough to one of them to speak her. “Hoy, there! This is Reliant!” Lewrie shouted to her from his starboard bulwarks.

  “Hoy, the Reliant!” her master called back from the larboard side of his quarterdeck. “This is the Avon! Captain Quarles, here!”

  “Were you the one firin’ distress rockets?” Lewrie asked him.

  “Aye! A big schooner come up from loo’rd and went aboard the ship astern of us, the Peacock!” Captain Quarles shouted. “Poor old Cap’m Venables was boarded and took before he could signal for help! I cracked on sail, and started firing off rockets to warn the others, but there was nothing I could do for them! What took you so long?”

  “Eat shit and die!” Lewrie muttered, and took a deep breath to calm himself before replying. “Where is Peacock now, sir?”

  “Last we could see of her, she and the schooner put about onto larboard tack and headed off Sou’-Sou’west! Didn’t you see her, sir?”

  “God dammit!” Lewrie spat, realising that the Peacock was lost for good. It had been the better part of an hour since Avon’s first rockets had been launched, since the privateer schooner had ghosted in and pounced, then tacked as soon as the boarding party had secured their prize. Peacock was a full-rigged, three-masted ship, and could sail no closer to the wind than six points, about sixty-six degrees. Slow as that process could be, she would now be miles astern of the convoy, and to dash off to rescue her would involve a very long stern-chase. If her lights were doused, Lewrie could only hope to lay his frigate on the same course of Sou’-Sou’west and thrash blindly after her in the utter darkness.

  But, he could not do that. Once clear of the vicinity of the convoy, the privateer surely would head West for some American port to sell her off quickly, and trying to cut a course Westerly in hopes of stumbling across her and the privateer by mid-day tomorrow would be equally bootless. Besides, were there other privateers waiting to strike, he could not abandon the other helpless ships. He had to stay with the trade.

  “Thankee, Captain Quarles! If the privateer schooner’s gone, ye may be safe for the night!” Lewrie called over.

  “Ain’t you going after her?” Quarles demanded.

  “I must stay with the convoy!” Lewrie shouted back. “And damned well ye know it … or should,” he whispered for his own benefit.

  “Oh, too bad,” the Sailing Master said with a sigh. “But, we ain’t like that chap from the Bible … the Good Shepherd?”

  “If we aren’t, Mister Caldwell, you can be damned sure that our Chaplain, Reverend Brundish, will remind us of it in his next homily,” Lewrie said with a groan.

  “How did it go?” Caldwell maundered on. “He went after the last wee lamb, instead of being satisfied with protecting the rest of his flock?”

  “A parable, sir,” Midshipman Houghton supplied. “It was one of Lord Jesus’ parables.”

  “Bugger parables!” Lewrie snarled, stomping off aft before he fed his urge to strangle someone.

  * * *

  When it came time to round up the convoy at dawn, and chivvy them back into their proper columns after a long and fruitless night of wary patrolling, with the hands at Quarters and everyone sleepless and reeling, they could count up their losses.

  Three ships had been plucked from the convoy during the night, by what was evidently a full three privateers, all of them schooners. The masters of a few ships that had escaped close encounters and had manoeuvred clear related breathless tales of being hailed and ordered to fetch-to by men who had declared their ships sailed with Letters of Marque and Reprisal issued by France. Some of those who had demanded surrender sounded French, but some sounded as English as plum duff!

  Those losses had been galling enough, but to add to the misery there were the ones that had been damaged during the convoy’s panicky stampede to windward. The columns had shredded, wheeling away from the threat, bearing up towards the next column to starboard, and order had turned to shambles.

  Another six vessels had gone aboard each other, tangling bow-sprits and jib-booms in another’s shrouds, or slamming hulls together and smashing chain platforms, which loosed tension on upper masts, and bringing them down in rats’ nests of sails, rigging, and spars. Those half-dozen not only had to be found, limping along astern of the rest, but rendered aid from sounder ships, or from the escort ships’ stores, as well.

  “A very rum show, by Jove,” Captain Blanding mournfully said to his gathered captains early that next afternoon. “A rum show, I must say! And just how the deuce did they ever find us? Comments?”

  No one wanted to touch that one. The sound of Captain Blanding stirring his cup of tea, that metal on china tinkling, was the loudest thing in Modeste’s great-cabins. Lewrie, Stroud, and Parham sat primly on collapsible chairs round Blanding’s settee, where their commander sprawled in untidy, and un-characteristic, gloom.

  “Ehm…,” Captain Stroud finally broke the silence with a hesitant noise. “Might they have known to be on the lookout for a Summer trade, sir?”

  “Uhm, possible, but…,” Blanding rejoined with a long sigh.

  “Possibly the ‘runners,’ sir,” Lewrie felt just bold enough to add. “They were cruisin’ the likely course a trade’d take, somewhat close to Hatteras, and most-like stumbled into one of our ships that had broken away for Savannah or Charleston, asked a few questions of her master, and stood out seaward t’find us.”

  “From leeward … on a night as black as my boots,” Blanding mused most miserably. Tinkle-tinkle-tinkle, went his spoon, though he had yet to lay it aside and take a sip. His cup and saucer rested on his substantial midriff. “And not one of our ships laid eyes on any of them, not even once!”

  “Well, sir, once they’d taken a prize, they doused her lights,” Captain Stroud said. “As they had come in with
all their lights out. Now, I thought I caught a glimpse of something standing Nor’westerly, but … by then I was caught up close to the convoy, too busy searching for a much closer threat … and, it was only a fleeting glimpse of something darker than the night … far off.”

  Oh, I doubt that! Lewrie sarcastically thought, about to snort and scoff out loud. Stroud would have something to say that would make him look industrious and alert, even if the others weren’t!

  “After all the honour and glory we’ve won since sailing from Portsmouth last Spring, too,” Captain Blanding said, with another of those long, theatrical sighs. “It is just too bad!”

  “Well, sir,” Stroud spoke up again, “we’ve taken rather a long jog East’rd since last evening…”

  “Forced to,” Captain Parham stuck in, grimacing.

  “… and our convoy will be East of the usual track, so if any more privateers are lurking about, that will make their hunt for more prizes much harder,” Stroud soldiered on, with a quick squint of impatience directed at Parham. “It’s good odds that we may escort the rest all the way to England with no more loss, sir.”

  Bloody toady! Lewrie thought; He had to have been, t’be First Officer under that twit Fillebrowne in Myrmidon!

  “That very likely may be true!” Captain Blanding said, perking up a bit. “Thank you for the thought, Captain Stroud.”

  Stroud bowed his head in acknowledgement, with a taut, pleased grin on his face. Lewrie couldn’t abide that.

  “There is the problem, though, sir,” Lewrie countered, “for our ‘runners’ bound for New England ports. If there are any more privateers on the hunt for prizes, our East’rd jog means the ships leaving the protection of the convoy have further t’sail on their own to reach the safety of an American port.”

  “There’s that, aye,” William Parham was quick to grasp. He all but winked at Lewrie as he continued. “Might it be necessary, sir, for the ‘runners’ who’ll be leaving us … given the circumstances … to provide at least one frigate to see them safe?”