The King's Privateer Read online

  “What if this Frog sails up too close?” Burgess asked.

  “Then we might go about and give him a sharp knock, anyway.”

  “God in Heaven, what if it’s not him, after all?” Burgess fretted. “I mean, it could be any ship, couldn’t it? This Sicard could have slacked off once he saw we were headed south, let another ship pass him, and gone off to play silly buggers with his pirate friends.”

  “If that happens, Burge,” Lewrie assured him with a wry grin, “we’ll look like no end of idiots. Or Captain Ayscough will.”

  That would kick the spine out of the crew, Alan thought, taking on some of Burgess’ fretfulness and turning to stare at the captain and Mr. Twigg up forward by the wheel binnacle. All the spine he’d put in them that morning. It made the hands easier to control if they knew what they were about, he realized, and he’d seen enough examples of captains who explained things to their crews. Contrariwise, there was the risk of saying too much of one’s expectations. And when those expectations or predictions turned out false, a captain could expect to lose renown in his own ship, making the seamen and mates, even the officers, suspect his abilities the next time.

  If the ship astern of them turned out to be something other than La Malouine, it would be disastrous for morale. Not to mention the no-end-of-shit wrangling if they fired into a stranger, or loomed up on her beam like … well, like a pirate, themselves!

  “Could be just about anybody back there,” Burgess reiterated.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Alan harrumphed. “Let’s not go borrowing trouble, Burge. It has to be La Malouine. She chanced the taifun weather to keep an eye on us. She’s been there big as life and twice as ugly, every hour since we left Macao. Why would Sicard go off east now, when he’s just as loaded as we are with profitable cargo? He has to get it to Pondichery and send it home in one of their Indiamen or lose money. I doubt King Louis could pay the bastard that much, else.”

  “I’ve been wondering …” Burgess began again, sounding a bit more tremulous and doubting.

  “Ye-ess?” Lewrie drawled lazily.

  “If Sicard is dogging our heels like this, that must mean that Choundas is somewhere up ahead. Where they could combine against us,” Burgess mused as Lewrie turned to go forward again, leading the Army man with him wordlessly. “He left Canton the end of November last year. Time enough to get back to wherever he’s based, re-man his ship, clean her bottom to make her faster. What did you call it?”

  “Careen and bream,” Alan replied. “Yes, I’d expect him in the Malacca Straits, if that’s what he was doing. Narrow waters, where we have to pass. But remember, it’s patrolled out of Bencoolen, and other ships’d be about. Perhaps too many for what he has in mind. He can’t let anyone see him fighting us. He’s supposed to remain as covert as we are, mind. Maybe farther north, on the eastern side of the Malay peninsula. Closer to the Johore Strait.”

  “Among the native princes,” Burgess grimaced. “And pirates.”

  “Never let it be said that you don’t give a world of joy to your companions, Burge,” Alan moaned sarcastically.

  “I only speculated to pass the time,” Burgess replied, a trifle archly. “’Tis not my nature to get the wind up over nothing. Like some sailors of my acquaintance. Or is that the result of a pea-soup diet?”

  “That’s a natural wind,” Alan told him, tapping the stiff back of Chiswick’s cocked hat to tip it forward over his nose.

  “I know what you and Caroline think of me, Alan,” Chiswick said stiffly, refusing to be japed out of his sulk. “A calf-headed dreamer. Too starry-eyed to prosper. I heard you that day we came back from Sir Onsley’s. It’s because I wept in the boat when we escaped Jenkins Neck after Yorktown, isn’t it? Well, what Governour did to that little shit … he had it coming, I know that, now. But it was against everything we’d fought for up to then. He shot him in the belly, a fifteen-year-old little hound. But a civilian hound, Alan. He wasn’t even armed. It wasn’t right. And I had a perfect right to be upset. Well, how much of a hard-handed warrior do I have to be before I live that down with you?”

  Burgess’ elder brother had put a dragoon pistol into the lad’s stomach and blown it away, down low where it wasn’t immediately fatal, so death was days away. Days of unspeakable agony. He’d gotten past their pickets, run all the way through the marshes and creeks to tell the French and Virginia Militia they were at his mother’s plantation down Jenkins Neck. If not for him and his misplaced heroism, they’d have gotten clean away, and half of Governour and Burgess’ men would still be alive; half of Alan’s seamen would be home now on a pension, or enjoying life. A lot of Virginians in their Militia would still live, and the stern veterans of Lauzun’s Legion would be swilling cheap vin ordinaire, slurping down snails and veal cutlets in some French tavern, instead of laid out in death-rows by the Ferguson rifles and his sailors’ cutlasses. It had been a smoky horror, at little more than arm’s reach, and when it was over, the dead greatly outnumbered the living. All for nothing. Corn-wallis had surrendered and the war was to all purposes over and lost. Governour had lost neighbors and lifelong friends from his orphaned detachment of North Carolina Loyalists. He’d done what felt right at the time, yet Burgess stumbled into the boat, shaking like a whipped puppy.

  “I hold nothing against you, Burgess,” Alan whispered softly. “I doubt you gave the harsh side of life, and soldiering, enough thought before you took this commission. And Caroline and I were worried about you out here in the East Indies. Mind, now,” he said, taking Chiswick by the elbow, “that was before I even suspected I’d be stuck out here myself!”

  “You didn’t volunteer to”—Burgess gasped—“to look after me for Caroline’s sake?”

  “Do I look that stupid?” Alan sighed.

  “Yes, I thought you did. Ah, I see. Sorry, Alan. All this time, I thought you’d volunteered, for Caroline,” Burgess fumbled. “I mean, the volunteering part. Not about your looking stupid, ey?”

  “That’s a fine relief.”

  “Excuse me, I’ve been nursing this … not a grudge, actually, ever since we sailed. I was rather glad to see the back of you when I went ashore in Calcutta. And here we were, together again, and I thought it was your doing. Something you said to your father, Major Willoughby.”

  “Burgess, you idiot!” Alan grinned. “The less I have to say to Sir Hugo, the better, man! No, I’m not your governess. And, no, I never held you in less respect because of Jenkins Neck. I think you’re a glory-hunting fool sometimes, but that don’t signify. You’re not as brutal and direct as your brother Governour, so yes, I do think you less suited for all this death-or-glory venturing. But that don’t mean I consider you soft.”

  He still had his doubts about that, but Burgess was a friend.

  “God bless you, then, Alan,” Burgess brightened, standing taller in his own estimation, and what he took to be Alan’s. “Here’s my hand on it. It wasn’t concern for a helpless fool you felt. It was concern for a friend. A firm friend, I trust.”

  “Aye to that, Burge,” Alan replied, shaking hands with him.

  “A fellow I’d be proud to have as a relation someday.”

  “Thankee kindly for your opinion, Burge,” Alan said, feeling cornered. Now the little oaf was buttock-brokering his sister at him! Maybe I’d be better off if he despised the very air I breathe! I’m much too young for that, sweet as Caroline is, he thought.

  “Ahoy, the lookout!” Ayscough wailed upwards to the cross-trees. “Still there?” His permanent litany, it seemed.

  “Royal ’bove the ’orizon, sir!” the lookout shouted back.

  Just after full darkness, before the last waning sliver of moonrise, they let slip the cutter. Telesto had brailed up her main course, taken a first reef in all three tops’ls and reduced her t’gallants to third reef to reduce their silhouette against what was left of the sunset horizon. From the deck, it appeared they were alone on the ocean, an ink-black shadow on an ink-black sea.

&nb
sp; With lug-sail winged out, and a small jib set forward, the cutter paced alongside Telesto for half an hour, slowly drawing ahead from stern-quarters to bow-sprit. From sprit-s’l boom to larboard bows: a cannon-shot away, another spectral imagining.

  “Four knots, sir,” Alan reported to Ayscough after a check of the knot-log. Ayscough nodded and drew out his pocket watch, leaning over the single candle in the compass binnacle to read it. Other than that one tiny glimmer, the ship was dark as a boot.

  “Eight of the clock. Sound eight bells forrud. End of the second dog-watch,” Ayscough ordered.

  Ting ting … ting ting … ting ting … ting ting, the last echoing on and on. Time to begin the evening watch. Time on a well-run ship to call the lookouts down from aloft and post the oncoming watchstanders on the upper deck vantage points. Time to recover the hammocks so men could sling their beds on the mess-decks and sleep, for ship’s corporals to prowl about below to see if every last glim was extinguished for the night. Time to light the taffrail lanterns to help illuminate the quarterdeck for the watch-keepers, and warn other ships of her presence to avoid collision.

  Ahead on the larboard bows, there was a tiny flurry of sparks as the captain’s cox’n struck flint on steel, several times, until the tinder caught. A brief flare of light. Then the sullen ruby glim of a burning slow-match swaying about in the darkness.

  “And the Lord said, let there be light,” Ayscough whispered, as first one, then the other taffrail lantern began to glow their yellow whale-oil cheeriness.

  “Mister Choate! All hands on deck! Stations to come about!”

  Chapter 2

  “If he holds his course, sir,” Mr. Brainard said in the airless chart space, all ports and doors, all partitions doubly cloaked in covert canvas, “at a pace of about … uhm, say five knots with night-reefs aloft, he’d be here by now.” A pencilled X appeared on the ocean chart. After a moment’s thought, Brainard drew a guesstimate circle around the X. “We put about here, nor’west with the wind abeam, at ten past the hour. Held that course for one hour, tacked to east, sou’east at ten past nine of the clock. We should, if God is just, be somewhere off his starboard stern-quarters now. We should see him dead ahead, or slightly …”

  “Excuse me, sir, Mister Choate’s compliments, captain, and the hands are at Quarters,” Lewrie reported, leaning through the folds of canvas that served as a light trap for one betraying lantern that swayed and winked coin-silver bright over the chart table.

  “Any sign of his lights, Mister Lewrie?” Ayscough asked.

  “None, sir.”

  “He’s sneaking along to trail us like a foot-pad in a London fog,” Twigg sniffed. “All the more sign he’s out there. An innocent ship would be burning her running lights.”

  Evidently, Twigg and Ayscough had shared the same doubts Burgess had expressed earlier as to the identity of their dogged pursuer.

  “As I was saying,” Brainard continued, marching a brass divider across the ocean chart slowly, punching a small pin-hole in the paper and turning to protractor and rule. “Do we come about to our original course in … ahhumm … five minutes, say, and we’ll be astern of him. He should be dead ahead, or fine on the larboard bow. I say five minutes, so we do not overrun his track in the dark.”

  “Very well,” Ayscough grunted, satisfied as much as he was going to be until he could throw rocks at La Malouine and hear them go chunk. “Six after ten. Mister Lewrie, let me see your watch? Ah, with mine. My respects to the first officer, and he is to lay the ship back on our original course of sou’sou’east half south in … four minutes.”

  “Aye, sir,” Alan replied, stumbling out of the chart space to fumble his way to the passageway that led forward to the quarterdeck. He relayed his message to Choate.

  “Now how the hell do I know when four minutes have passed?” Choate griped. Even the compass binnacle candle had been extinguished now, just in case. “Night black as a Moor’s arse …”

  “I hadn’t thought about that, sir,” Alan had to admit. “Perhaps if you prised the glass cover off your watch, sir? Read it by feel?”

  “Not my watch, Mister Lewrie. My wife gave it me.”

  “My father gave me mine, sir,” Alan stated.

  “Mister Lewrie,” Choate coaxed. “’Tis for the King!”

  “Excuse me, sir, I’ll go aft into the passageway. Perhaps I’ll find a glim there, sir.”

  Damned if he’d ruin a prize watch for anyone!

  They were saved by Ayscough and the others coming on deck and issuing the instruction to come about. Ropes slithered and hissed through blocks. Sheaves squealed in those blocks loud as opera stars. Sails rustled and boomed, and the hull groaned loud as a storm as she adjusted to a new angle of heel, resettling her timbers in complaint.

  There was nothing to see. And damned little light from the occluded stars to see by. The sliver of moon was not enough light to help pick out a man on deck were he dressed all in white.

  “Keep close watch astern,” Ayscough warned. “Just in case.”

  But there was nothing there, either. The only sign of motion on the sea were the taffrail lanterns in the cutter’s stern, far out ahead of them, and those almost on the rough edge of the horizon, so low were they to the water, and so far off by now after their triangular diversion. It took a sharp eye to make out that there were two and not one, foreshortened together as they were.

  “Well, damme,” Ayscough muttered after half an hour had passed. “Where is that bastard? Not hide nor hair of him. Can’t even smell him. Anyone see phosphorescence from his wake ahead? No? Damme!”

  “Has to be ahead of us,” Twigg insisted.

  “Might have reefed for the night, same as us,” Choate opined. “Still, even at the four knots we were doing before we turned, we’d at least be abeam of them. He’d have slowed to keep his interval.”

  “Or,” Ayscough wondered aloud, “Sicard would have dashed on ahead. The cutter’s lights are closer together than our taffrail posts by eighteen feet, and lower to the water. He might have cracked on more sail to catch up. Mister Choate, hands aloft. Lay out and let fall the tops’ls to the second reef. Loose t’gallants to the first reef.”

  “Aye, sir. Bosun, no pipes. Topmen of the watch lay aloft!”

  “There, sir!” Hogue almost screamed from the larboard gangway ladder. “Something went between us and the cutter’s lights! Two points off the larboard bows, sir!”

  “Avast, Mister Choate. Quartermaster, put your helm down. One point closer to the wind. Make her head sou’sou’east,” Ayscough barked. “Hands to the braces.”

  “Aye, sir,” the quartermaster replied, spinning his spokes on the huge double wheel slowly. “Helm down a point. Sou’sou’east. Wind large on the larboard quarter, sir.”

  “Thus, quartermaster. Steady as she goes.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Sou’sou’east, thus,” the man intoned.

  Maddeningly, after that brief, tantalizing glimpse, there was still nothing to be seen. Another half an hour passed. They allowed the hands at Quarters to stand easy, or lay down to nap on the bare decks. They rotated the lookouts to allow fresher eyes to peer into the almost stygian blackness, searching for their foe.

  Another half-hour passed.

  “There!” Percival rasped in a harsh whisper. “Hear it?”

  Very faint, almost like a fantasy, there came a chiming.

  “Six bells o’ the evening watch,” Ayscough agreed. “Damme, for us to be able to hear that, he has to be up to windward of us. And not too far to windward, at that!”

  Hogue with his incredibly sharp eyes was back from larboard, tugging on the captain’s sleeve, and pointing to their left, over the larboard side. The captain stood behind Hogue, letting his arm be a pointer. Ayscough sucked in a quick breath, then let it out in a sigh of contentment. “Ayyye!” he whispered.

  There was something out there. Something a little more solid than the spectral shadows that had played at the edge of their vision for the las
t hour, the kind that are seen but not seen, apprehended and then lost to sight the harder one peered for them. This one did not go away.

  “Helm down another half a point, quartermaster. Handsomely does it,” Ayscough ordered.

  “Aye, sir,” the senior quartermaster agreed, grunting as he put his weight to the spokes, and the steering tackle ropes on the wheel barrel groaned softly. Three, four spokes of larboard helm, and Telesto leaned a bit as the wind came larger on her left beam.

  “Yes!” Alan muttered. “Sir, a light!”

  It wasn’t much. A tiny, insubstantial afterthought of a light. Not so much the light itself, but the outer glow it threw, like the glow of a seaport under the horizon reflected on clouds.

  “One … two …” Ayscough counted. “Yes, one at his binnacle, one forrud, that’d be by his fo’c’sle belfry. Damme, look at that!”

  A smoky brown square appeared, barely discernible from black, behind the second glimmer, an almost butcher-paper brown.

  “Captain’s or wardroom quarter-gallery, sir,” Alan supplied. “They’ve some canvas screens or curtains over the windows, but there’s a lantern behind.”

  “Aye.” Ayscough was almost panting with excitement. “If he …” Ayscough held up his hands, calculating angles and distance. Left hand by the brownish hint of illumination, right hand and index finger aimed at the foremost glow like a gun. “Two points off the larboard bow, and I make the range to be two cables. We’ve got him! Mister Choate, wake the hands at Quarters. I intend to rake him in passing with the starboard battery. Boot him right up the arse. Then wear ship and give him the larboard battery from close aboard. If we take him by surprise he’ll fall right down to us. To hell with the wind gauge! He’ll not be expecting us to fight from leeward.”

  Alan dashed down below to the lower gun deck as midshipmen and ship’s corporals passed their messages. He found Hoolahan, his Irish gunner, resting on a jute-bound bale of cloth bolts, silk bolts that were worth more money than his entire county back home. Owen, the senior quarter-gunner, was napping with his back leant against a carline post that supported the upper deck, his feet propped up on a crate of tableware worth a duke’s ransom.