"Signal, sir!" Rushing shouted down to them from far forward. "White Ensign to the mmnmast truck! Number pennants! Four… Six… Repeater!… Nine… Fifteen, sir!"
With both midshipmen, who normally were in charge of the signal nag lockers, away on prizes, it fell to Lewrie himself to delve into the binnacle cabinet drawers for the latest code combinations.
"Ah, hum… right, then," he concluded, after a long moments fumbling over a loose sheaf of wrinkled papers that threatened to go overside with the wind. "This month's recognition code, to the tee, gentlemen. She's one of ours. Mister Knolles? Do you have the White Ensign hoisted to the mainmast truck, and reply… uhm… Fifteen… Twenty-Two… Three… Repeater… Four. Got that?"
"Aye aye, sir," Knolles called back, snapping his fingers at a man of the after-guard, one of those literate "strikers" who assisted on the taffrails as a signalman.
Barely had that been bent on and hoisted high on the weather side of the mizzenmast, where it could be more easily read, than the newly arrived ship up to the sou'east hauled down her original hoist, and up went another one identifying her. Then a third; this one, orders.
"Pursue… Chase… More closely…" Lewrie translated, as the numerals were read off to him. Feeling like a half-wit midshipman all over again, at how long it was taking him, compared to the fluency of his inferiors. And with every eye on the quarterdeck upon him, too! "To Loo'rd!" he completed, puffing out his cheeks in frustration.
Well, o' course, he thought with a silent grunt; that recognition code had told him that the other ship was a 6th-Rate frigate, HMS Ariadne, twenty guns. A proper, post-captain's command, a man senior to him. Two guns, all the diff rence in the world! Alan griped. She wished Jester to haul her wind, sail a touch north of due east, cutting off any hopes the poleacres might have of simply turning and running to the north… or of gaining their saving current before Ariadne had come to grips with them.
"Haul our wind, Mister Knolles," Lewrie snapped. "Give us two points free, to east by north. And, topmen aloft, to set royals."
"Aye, sir."
Ariadne, Alan sighed; a brand-spanking new ship of war! My old 'un must've sunk at her moorings in English Harbor, at last. His very first ship had been HMS Ariadne, then a tired and worn old sixty-four-gunner of the 3rd Rate. Condemned after his very first action in the West Indies, too, for "hogging" at bow and stern, her back most likely broken, she'd become a guard ship, receiving ship, later just a useless hulk without a single gun, stripped down aloft to her fighting tops and gant lines.
Captain cashiered for her loss, first lieutenant court-martialed with him; fourth and fifth killed, third lieutenant convicted of cowardice… oh, she'd been a miserable old hag, even before then, and a terrible place for a seventeen-year-old to begin a naval career. Autumn of 1780, it was…
Damme, I'm gettin' bloody ancient] he thought.
He took a deep breath, clapped his hands together, and paced to the lee bulwarks with a telescope, to shrug off just how far back, in the antedeluvian age, he'd really gotten his "ha'porth of tar"!
There was their bilander, pacing along about ESE, four or five miles alee and off the larboard quarter. Nearer in to them was their tartane, only a mile astern, but three miles alee. And Spendlove and his dhow- or whatever else one might call it!-was, of course, the poor third, behind them all, even though she'd been the last, nearest, taken. A clumsy, udder-swinging old cow to begin with, and now directed by English tars, who'd never even clapped eyes on her like, before, much less tried to handle her lateen rig to best efficiency.
And the poleacre that had tried to decoy them away from her two consorts was…
"Christ, shat on a biscuit!"
She'd hauled her wind, worn about to run with the wind large on her starboard quarter, and was not three miles astern of Jester at that very moment, crossing from starboard to larboard quarter. Steering on what he took to be a course of nor'east by east. The bugger was after the prize vessels, bold as a dog in a doublet!
"Mister Knolles, new course… nor'east!" Lewrie shouted. "And bend on a signal to our prizes… Make All Sail. And add 'Imperative' to that! Uhm… they are to…"
What the Devil was the clearest signal, he fumed, running through a combination of orders. Damme, yes! "Order them to 'Take Station to Weather' of us!"
Half-past ten o'clock of the Forenoon Watch, by then, the winds beginning to abate, beaten into sullen submission by the oppressive and sultry heat of a Mediterranean July. Last summer around Toulon had been a coolish fluke of nature, all that rain and nippish cold. Here in the Ligurian Sea, summer winds were fickle, at best, a morning's gale blown out and hammered to compass-boxing zephyrs by midday. Just what they needed least, Lewrie thought. And hellish bad timin', too!
"Deck, there!" Rushing called from the foremast. "Ariadne is sending… 'Interrogative'!"
"Almost polite of him, consid'rin'," Lewrie said with a grimace. What that full-of-ginger post-captain yonder had really asked was, "Just what the Devil you think you're playing at, you damn' fool!"
He raised his telescope once more to study his laboring prize ships. Yes, they'd begun to make more sail, to alter course harder on the wind to get closer to Jester's protective artillery. Even Mister Spendlove's weary old dhow-thing-gummy had sprouted a mustache of foam under her bows. Not much of one, admittedly, but it was there. Lash the fore-ends of the lateen yards low to the center of the decks, and haul them fore-and-aft by brute force, though… she simply must sail better to windward, like a gaff-rigged cutter or sloop.
"Sir?" Knolles prompted at his elbow, his voice soft and confidential. "What reply do we send Ariadne?"
"The only one she'll understand, I s'pose, Mister Knolles," Alan snickered, with a lift of his eyebrows. "Bend on good old Number One."
Admiral Howe's revisions to the code flags always put the most important message, the one that alerted warship captains to the prime reason for existence, at the very top of the list, and, in an easily understandable single-pennant hoist.
Number One of the Howe System was, "Enemy in Sight!"
CHAPTER
2
"Mister Knolles, is there a code flag for 'Suggestion'?" Alan inquired, once Jester had worn off the wind, and had begun to run alee toward her struggling prize vessels.
"Uhm… there's 'Submit,' sir," Knolles answered.
"And I s'pose that's a picture of a man tugging his forelock?" Lewrie posed, tongue-in-cheek.
"Groveling most humbly, as well, I should imagine, Captain," his first lieutenant replied with a bright grin.
"Make to Ariadne, then… most humbly, mind…" Lewrie ordered, "Submit-her number-Pursue Chases-uhm, Closer Action? He might make some sense of that. Followed by… Our number- Closer Action-Chase to Leeward. No sense losing those two poleacres, to deal with a single armed ship. Jester can handle this'un, by herself."
"Aye aye, sir," Knolles agreed, full of pride in their ship.
"Besides," Lewrie continued. "Damme if I'll make that fellow a richer man, at the expense of our people's freedom. I'll not lose 'em, when we've come this far together."
Farther off the wind, then, running almost "both-sheets-aft," on a landsman's breeze, due north; Jester passed the first of their prizes and put herself between the overly aggressive French poleacre and their tartane. The strange-acting Frenchman hardened up on the wind, as well, coming more nor'easterly, to meet them, ignoring the bilander and dhow.