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  “Mister Westcott, prepare to wear about,” Lewrie announced. To Midshipman Munsell, who still attended to the signals right aft by the flag lockers and halliards, he ordered, “Hoist a signal to the others for them to ‘Wear To Larboard Tack In Succession’, new course will be Sou’east. Once we’re about, Mister Munsell, you will hoist ‘Form Line Of Battle’.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Damme, but it’s smartly done, at least, Lewrie could proudly tell himself after Reliant had swung away off the wind and had rounded up to the wind in a long arc to counter-march down past the rest of the squadron, which was still standing on on the opposite tack. They were one cable apart, as neatly spaced as beads on a string. Lewrie could watch as Thorn reached the large disturbed white patch of foam where Reliant had begun her wheel-about, and began her wear leeward. A minute later and it was Lizard which put about, and Thorn was dead-astern of Lewrie’s frigate, her up-thrust jib-boom a cable behind Reliant’s transom. It was a manoeuvre as well executed as a parade by the Brigade of Guards in London.

  The signal halliards had been cleared when the first hoist was struck, the signal for the “Execute” to begin the counter-march. Now, the light blocks squealed as the briefer order for “Form Line Of Battle” was sent soaring up to be two-blocked and lashed securely in place.

  “First charges up!” Lt. Spendlove called on the weather deck, summoning ship’s boys to come forward from their crouches with their leather or wood cartridge cases. “Load cartridge!” and the rammer-men shoved the flannel powder charges into the opened muzzles of the great-guns and carronades, then rammed them down to the bases of the gun tubes. “Load with shot! Shot your guns!”

  Lewrie went to the windward bulwarks, now the larboard side, and raised his telescope, willing himself not to let his hands shake in dread. The ship’s people on the quarterdeck were looking to him for steadiness; the sailors on the gangways and the gunners in the waist, the men aloft in the fighting tops who would tend the sails and repair damage to the yards and running rigging, and the Marines in the tops with their swivels and muskets, would all be looking to him.

  The frigate seemed to roar as the weather guns were run out to the port-sills, and the gun-ports were lowered to create a chequer down the ship’s hull stripe. “Prick cartridge!” Lt. Spendlove was crying, followed by “Prime your guns, and stand ready!”

  Damme, I should’ve waited a bit more! Lewrie chid himself, for his squadron would cross the course of that strange squadron at better than three cables, hopelessly beyond the best range for his lighter ships. Only Reliant could hit the leading frigate.

  “Deck, there!” a main mast lookout screeched. “They’re hoistin’ British colours!”

  Has t’be a ruse, damn ’em! Lewrie furiously thought, though he could see the Union flags for himself with his glass.

  “The flagship makes her number, sir!” Midshipman Munsell cried from halfway up the weather mizen shrouds. “And, she shows a private signal!”

  “Then get down from there and look it up, young sir!” Lewrie barked, totally befuddled. Munsell scrambled down and dug into one of the flag lockers for the books of private codes that were changed monthly. “Well?” Lewrie prompted again.

  “Ah … she’s the Athenian, sixty-four, sir,” Munsell hesitantly related, shuffling from one book to the other, “and her private signal is for us to make our number to her!”

  “Well, just damn my eyes!” Lewrie snapped, slamming the tubes of his telescope shut with rising anger. “Do so, Mister Munsell.”

  Each ship of the Royal Navy, from wee one-masted cutters to the towering three-deckers of the First Rate, was assigned a number which would announce her identity, but did not list who commanded her. That would be found in Steele’s Original and Correct List, and Lewrie did not imagine that Munsell had thought to include Steele’s in his set of essentials; it was most likely below on the orlop.

  “Very well, Mister Munsell,” Lewrie grudgingly allowed. “Make our number to her. Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie cried down to the guns. “They appear to be British, so withdraw the priming quills for now, and un-ship the flintlock strikers.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Spendlove replied, looking far more relieved by that revelation, as did the gunners, than steely English tars should.

  “Athenian shows a fresh hoist, sir,” Munsell reported. “It is … our number, and ‘Captain Repair On Board’.”

  “Very well, Mister Munsell,” Lewrie said, beginning to work up a wee “seethe” over how late this new senior officer had left things before showing his true colours. “Strike the hoist for ‘Form Line Of Battle’, and replace it with … the small ships’ numbers, and ‘Secure From Quarters’ … followed by … ‘Will Enter Harbour’. Let’s send ’em back to port, before these new’uns get all the good anchorages.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  “Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie shouted down from the hammock nettings at the forward break of the quarterdeck. “Run in your guns, draw shot and charges, and secure.”

  Lewrie turned to Westcott next, who stood by with a bemused expression on his face, rocking on the balls of his booted feet.

  “Once we’re Southeast of the squadron’s line of sailing, we’ll come about to close alee of the first two-decker’s larboard side and I’ll report aboard her. Have a cutter brought round from being towed astern, and alert Desmond and my boat crew.”

  “Aye, sir,” Westcott said.

  “Just damn and blast that bastard, whoever he is, for waitin’ so late!” Lewrie fumed. “What the Devil did he think he was playin’ at? Is this his lame idea of a grand jape? People could’ve gotten killed!”

  I could’ve been killed, more to the point! Lewrie seethed to himself.

  “I’m going t’give that clown a piece of my mind!” Lewrie declared, tugging his pistols from his coat pockets and looking round for Pettus or Jessop to take charge of them.

  “I do note, though, sir,” Lt. Westcott cautioned, “that he’s flying a broad pendant … the senior plain red one.”

  “At this moment, I don’t give a tinker’s damn!” Lewrie spat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “So, who the Devil’s this Lewrie chap, Meadows?” the Commodore of the new-come squadron asked of his Flag-Captain, the officer actually in charge of HMS Athenian, as he idly watched the frigate take in her main course to match speeds with his flagship, about fifty yards off the larboard side.

  “He’s listed in Steele’s as Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet, sir,” Captain Meadows told the Commodore, Captain Grierson.

  “His fam’ly must be poor as church-mice, did they send their eldest to sea, hey?” Grierson scoffed in a lazy drawl. “What is the date of his Post-Captaincy?”

  “The Spring of ’97, sir,” Meadows supplied.

  “Ha! Good, then, I’ve two years’ seniority over him, whoever he is,” Grierson chortled.

  “Beg pardon for the intrusion on a private conversation, sir, but I have some information of him,” Athenian’s First Lieutenant, one fellow by name of Hayes, spoke up.

  It was not as if Grierson’s and Meadows’s conversation was all that private, anyway, for Captain Grierson always spoke loudly, and Captain Meadows had been half-deafened by cannonfire since his days as a Lieutenant; neither could hold a private conversation.

  “Indeed, sir?” Grierson snapped, looking down his nose at the interloper as if a beggar had tugged at his sleeve for alms.

  “Captain Lewrie is known in the Fleet as the ‘Ram-Cat’, sir,” Hayes related as formally as he could; secretly, he did not care for their new Commodore. “For his choice of pets, and his repute for being aggressive. He is also known as ‘Black Alan’ Lewrie for opposing slavery, and liberating slaves from Jamaica to man his ship. He was tried for it, but acquitted. Wilberforce and his crowd are mad for him.”

  “Good God, Wilberforce!” Commodore Grierson spat in disgust, as did a great many of The Quality and men of business. “That earnest wee ass! He and his Kill-Joys, pah! The
y’ll be outlawing drink and horse racing, next! Anything else?”

  “There was some face-to-face bother with Napoleon Bonaparte in Paris in 1802, sir,” Hayes went on. “It’s said that ‘Boney’ set some of his agents to kill him, but murdered Captain Lewrie’s wife instead, so he’s been a widower for some time, and … it is also said that he does not have the most discriminating taste in women. There was talk of a divorced lady.…”

  “Perhaps his sobriquet of the ‘Ram-Cat’ is not about his pets,” Captain Meadows slyly said in jest.

  “That’ll be enough, Mister Hayes,” Commodore Grierson said as he waved a hand in dismissal. “I think I take his measure. And, in any instance, he will not be on-station much longer.”

  “Aye, sir,” Lt. Hayes said, doffing his hat and bowing himself away. Arrogant prick! Hayes thought.

  The Commodore, Captain Grierson, strolled aft to watch a cutter depart the Reliant frigate’s starboard main-chains and set out for Athenian under oars, steering to cross close under his ship’s stern and end up alongside her starboard side, and the starboard entry-port, the port of honour. Grierson thought of requesting a telescope for a look at this Lewrie fellow, but decided that that would be showing too keen an interest. He would wait ’til he was aboard.

  Grierson was certain that he would not like him, already.

  * * *

  “Best coat and hat, sir?” Pettus enquired as Lewrie prepared to board his cutter.

  “No, no time for the niceties,” Lewrie decided. “A senior officer sends a summons, and it’s better to obey instanter.”

  “I found Athenian in Steele’s, sir,” Midshipman Munsell said as Lewrie began to walk over to the starboard ladderway and the beginning of the sail-tending gangway, where the open entry-port and side-party awaited. “She was brought out of Ordinary in October of last year, and her captain is Donald McNaughton.”

  “Thankee, Mister Munsell,” Lewrie told him with a brief grin and nod of confirmation. “A Scot, is he? Perhaps I’ll be piped aboard with bagpipes, and be offered a sheep! Carry on.”

  He doffed his hat to the side-party, the crew, and the flag, and quickly descended to the cutter, where his normal boat crew, hands who had been with him in his retinue for years, waited with vertical oars. Once seated aft by Cox’n Liam Desmond by the tiller, the boat shoved off and began a smart and rapid row to the two-decker.

  Lewrie looked up as his boat crossed the Athenian’s stern, and he was grudgingly impressed by her transom decoration. Her name board was royal blue, framed in expensive gilded wood scrollings, and wooden letters, also gilded, spelled out her name. To either side, there were representations of Grecian helmets, shields, and spears, also done with gilt paint over bas-relief. Much the same had been applied to all her quarter galleries and stern gallery, where a senior officer could sit with his feet up on the ornate railings in good weather and sip wine, or read in private.

  This McNaughton fellow must be rich as Croesus! Lewrie thought.

  The bow man hooked his gaff onto the main-chains, the oars were tossed, and Lewrie unsteadily stood and made his way to the gunn’l to reach out to the battens and man-ropes. The climb was a lot longer than on his frigate, though the two-decker’s tumblehome was not as steep.

  As the upright dog’s vane of his cocked hat appeared above the lip of the entry-port, the bosuns’ calls began a duet salute, Marines stamped and presented muskets, and sailors’ hats were doffed high. Lewrie reached the top step of the entry-port and hauled himself in-board with a characteristic jerk and stamp, well clear of being dunked back overboard should Athenian do an unpredictable roll. He doffed his own hat to one and all, to the quarterdeck and flag.

  “Welcome aboard, sir,” a sun-bronzed and rough-featured Post-Captain said to him. “Allow me to name myself to you.… Meadows, the Flag-Captain of Athenian.”

  “Lewrie, of the Reliant frigate, sir, and delighted to make your acquaintance,” Lewrie replied with a smile. “Your Captain McNaughton is below, Captain Meadows?”

  “Oh sir, I fear your Steele’s is out of date,” Meadows told him with a frown. “Captain McNaughton passed away some weeks back of some fever. Captain Henry Grierson now commands the squadron. If you follow me, sir? He awaits you on the quarterdeck.”

  That’s never a good sign, Lewrie thought as he followed the man aft; Whatever happened to something “wet” in the great-cabins? Christ, what a fashion-plate!

  Lewrie beheld an officer about one inch taller than his own five feet nine inches, a man whom women might find devilishly and rakishly handsome, but for a long beak of a nose, down which this Grierson peered at the new arrival. Grierson wore his best-dress uniform coat with all the gold lace and twin epaulets and buttons gleaming. Despite the warmth of the day, the coat was doubled over his chest, perhaps to show off the two vertical rows of nine buttons each side, and the expensive width of the lace edgings. There was an expensive and ornate watch fob hung below the waist of the coat, which was cut a bit higher than most. Grierson also wore snow-white breeches of the finest duck, breeches so white that they might never have seen tar, slush, or saltwater washes. The breeches were so snug that it appeared Grierson was sewed into them, or greased up beforehand. The shiny black boots were not Hessians like most officers wore, but more like top-boots minus the brown-leather upper band. And Grierson sported a fore-and-aft bicorne hat like a French general!

  His neck-stock’s starched and ironed, by God! Lewrie took note; What a fop! Don’t he know ye get dirty on ships?

  Conversely, Captain Henry Grierson did not much care for what he saw of Captain Lewrie, either. The plain coat and hat, with gold lace epaulets slowly turning green from exposure to salt airs, the slightly curved and plain-hilted hanger at his hip instead of a small-sword of value, combined with a silk shirt and fresh neck-stock seemed paradoxical. And the old style of that plain hat!

  “Alan Lewrie, reporting aboard, sir,” Lewrie said, doffing his hat once more, a few feet away from Grierson.

  “Sir Alan, I presume,” Grierson said in a drawl with one brow up as he doffed his own in carefully studied welcome.

  “Only on good days, sir,” Lewrie japed and grinned.

  Grierson took note of the faint scar on Lewrie’s cheek, paler than his dark tan, and wondered where it had come from. This Lewrie fellow, Grierson determined, was a rather handsome and well set up chap, handsome enough to raise his hackles when confronted by one who could be considered a rival in Society. If only this Lewrie would bear himself more gravely! Why, he appeared to be the unlikeliest “Merry Andrew”, for all the repute that Lt. Hayes had imparted!

  “My word, Captain Lewrie,” Grierson said as he put his fore-and-aft bicorne back on, the front so low to his eyes that he just naturally had to cock his head back and look down his nose, “your welcome to the Bahamas was most war-like. One could conjure that you would have crossed my line and raked my leading frigates, ha ha!”

  “Until you hoisted British colours, I would have, sir,” Lewrie told him with a serious and level expression.

  “With a lone frigate and three little cockleshells?” Grierson asked with a loud laugh. “Whatever did you think to accomplish?”

  “The rumour was that you were a French squadron,” Lewrie said with a shrug. “I was prepared to defend Nassau at all hazards, sir.”

  “If we had been French, you would have been swatted aside in a trice!” Grierson said with another dis-believing laugh, sweeping one arm to encompass his warships, and all their immense firepower.

  “Well, we might’ve gotten in a blow or two, sir,” Lewrie said in reply, irked at Grierson’s dismissive airs, “but, we would have done our duty to the very last. It’s what England expects.”

  Grierson clapped his hands into the small of his back and gave Lewrie a high-nosed glare, as if he’d never heard the like. Out of the corner of his eyes, Lewrie espied a Lieutenant standing nearby who allowed himself an approving nod, and turned to whisper “Ram-Cat” to Captain Meadows.
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br />   “Well, at any rate, such neck-or-nothing was not necessary, so all’s well,” Grierson concluded. “It would appear, Captain Meadows, that my little jest was mis-understood. Ah, well.”

  “So, sailing in and flying no colours was a jest, sir?” Lewrie asked with a brow up in sour surprise. “I must tell you, then, sir, that you ruined a day’s fishing for a great many Free Blacks, and put the wind up the residents of Nassau and New Providence. In point of fact, there were one or two merchantmen who fled you, and sailed on Westerly. It was they who first spread the alarm.

  “I’d imagine by now that they’re halfway up the Nor’west Providence Channel, fleein’ to some American port, with the news that a French invasion force has taken Nassau,” Lewrie sternly pointed out, and admittedly took some joy in the doing. “Who knows how long before that news reaches our Ambassador in Washington, or the Admiral commanding the North American station at Halifax … or London?”

  If Lewrie had whipped out a belaying pin and jabbed Grierson in the groin, the fellow could not have looked more stricken!

  “Captain Lewrie,” Grierson intoned after giving that a long thought, and re-gathering his aplomb, “I see that your frigate flies the inferior broad pendant. Did you take it upon yourself to promote yourself in Captain Forrester’s absence?”

  “I already had independent orders from Admiralty to sail for the Bahamas and form a small squadron in shoal-draught ships to hunt French and Spanish privateers along the coast of Spanish Florida and in neutral American waters, sir,” Lewrie patiently explained, resenting Grierson’s tone, and the accusation that he had broken out his broad pendant without authorisation. “By the time we returned to New Providence, after clearing out a nest of privateers up the Saint Mary’s River, Captain Forrester had already departed, leaving me as the senior officer present. There was a promise from Antigua of re-enforcement, but I was not holdin’ my breath waitin’ for them.”

  And when are ye goin’ t’offer me a glass o’ wine, ye top-lofty bastard? Lewrie fumed to himself.