But, just as Aspinall was lifting the cloth cover from the cake, the Marine sentry slammed his musket butt on the deck outside, with a strident, rather urgent, cry of "Second Off 'cah… SAH!"
"Enter, Mister Catterall," Lewrie bade, cocking a brow over Lt. Catterall's exquisite timing, imagining that the Second Lieutenant, who had the appetite of all three midshipmen together, had thought to wangle himself a hefty slice of cake, or at least a free cup of coffee.
"Signal rockets from the convoy, sir!" Lt. Catterall announced, though, his usually saturnine demeanour much agitated. "Fusees and an alert gun from Horatius, as well!"
"Pipe 'All Hands,' Mister Catterall, and Beat to Quarters, at once," Lewrie snapped, rising and tossing his napkin into his plate. "Sorry 'bout the cake, gentlemen, but it appears there may be Frogs in the offing. Your posts… shoo, scat, younkers!"
As they quickly rose and tumbled out without ceremony, Lewrie went aft for his baldric and hanger-sword, looking about for Aspinall and his Cox'n, Andrews.
"Andrews, do you fetch up my pair of pistols, soon as you can. Aspinall… save the cake, if that's possible. Then, see yourself and the cats to the orlop, with the Carpenter's crew."
In a twinkling, sailors would rush to man the 12-pounders mounted right-aft in Lewrie's cabins, knock down the deal partitions, and bundle fragile furniture, sure to be turned into deadly flying splinters in battle, below. One last snatch off a rack in the chart-space for his cocked hat, and he was off himself, out onto the main deck and up the windward ladderway to the quarterdeck, amid the mad, but well-drilled, bustle of sailors clearing their ship for action. Off-watch men rushed up with the long sausages of their hammocks and bedding, perhaps not rolled as tightly as they would each morning to pass through the ring-measure, to stow them in the iron stanchions and nettings, to turn them into a feeble defence against grapeshot, splinters, and musket fire.
"Where away?" Lewrie demanded, grabbing a spare night-glass by the binnacle cabinet. The Marine drummer was beating the long roll, bosuns' calls were peeping, hundreds of feet, shod or bare, thundered on oak decks, and Proteus nigh-shuddered to the sounds of loose items, sea-chests and stools being rushed to the orlop or holds, mess-tables being hoisted to the overheads on the gun-deck, of gun-tools removed from their overhead racks.
"Starboard side of the convoy, sir," Lt. Langlie breathlessly reported in the dark. He and the other officers and warrants had come in a rush from their own suppers. "Lieutenant Catterall reported that he'd seen a rocket and fusee from Stag, then heard the night signal gun 'board Horatius, before he summoned you. Ah, there's another!"
One Indiaman, then a second astern of her at the forward end of the starboard-most of two columns, both were now burning blue warning fusees high aloft, and launching amber rockets from their swivel-guns.
Lewrie lifted the night-glass to his right eye, straining ahead and to starboard. The convoy was at present bound South, about twenty miles off the shore, a dark coast lit only by a single, feeble bonfire atop either the Lion's Rump or Green Point, near the entrance to Table Bay, high enough above the sea to still be somewhat visible. They had nearly sailed that sea-mark below the horizon, and within the hour had need to come about and plod North, but for this.
Lewrie picked out ships by their large taffrail lanthorns: HMS Horatius far ahead, and now sporting a blue fusee at her main-top, and four Indiamen astern of her, the "threatened" pair that sailed on the starboard flank also lit up with the bright, blue pinpoint lights on their mastheads. They were turning away to larboard, pairs of stern lanthorns pinching together, and the vaguest hints of canvas growing like spectral spooks in the faint starlight, and what was thrown by a mere sliver of moon. Farther out lay Captain Philpott's HMS Stag, a black smear of hull, a pair of taffrail lights, and her upper sails visible by the burning fusee at her mainmast tip.
Damn this bloody thing! Lewrie furiously thought, cursing the night telescope, for its series of lenses was one short to allow more light into the tube, making everything appear backwards, and upside down. With the glass, Stag was headed North; without, she was headed South… foreshortening as she turned up into the West wind to face… something. HMS Horatius was also turning Sou'-Sou'west, as close as she could lie to those winds unless she tacked and came about.
"Can't make out a bloody thing," Lewrie griped aloud, lowering the telescope and rubbing his offending eye. "There's something up to the West of them, but damned if I can spot it. Any word from Grafton?"
"None, sir," Langlie was forced to say. "Same flares as us."
"Well, of course," Lewrie said with a frustrated sigh. Captain Treghues possessed the customary Navy signals book, as well as the one of his own devising, but both of them were based on the precondition of daylight! Nighttime signals could alert the merchantmen and warships to threat, but could not convey any tactical orders as to which action they might take, together. It was up to each captain's judgement as to how he might respond from his own, scattered, position at one of the convoy's four corners. Here, on the larboard, and landward, flank of the dark ships, it was up to Lewrie alone how best to act.
"Now, the near-hand column's hauling their wind, sir," Langlie pointed out. With his naked eyes, Lewrie took note of the two nearest Indiamen's lights; their hulls were beginning to occlude the starboard lanthorns, the blue masthead fusees swinging almost atop their glowing larboard taffrail lights.
"We're going t'get trampled, are we not careful," Lewrie griped. "Shake out the reefs in courses and tops'ls, Mister Langlie, and get a way on, so we pass ahead of those tubs."
"Aye aye, sir! Topmen! Topmen aloft, trice up and lay out!"
"Great-guns manned, loaded, and ready, sir!" Lt. Catterall said from the foot of the quarterdeck ladder. "The ship is in all respects prepared for action."
The gun-deck forward and below Lewrie's post amidships by those freshly hammock-stiffened quarterdeck nettings was dimly lit for night action. A well-spaced row of battle lanthorns marched down each beam, thickly-glassed and made of heavy metal, so gun crews could have just enough illumination to see to their duties, robust enough to resist a spill of the candle flames inside them, and create a fatal fire or an explosion of a serge powder cartridge after it had been removed from its wood or leather carrying sleeve. Beside them, tiny red "fireflies" glowed between the glossy, black-painted artillery; smouldering ends of slow-match coils wrapped round the tops of the swab-water tubs by each piece, the last-resort means of igniting the priming quills full of the finest mealed gunpowder, should the flint in more modern flintlock strikers break or fail. Far up forward, there were another pair of small lights by the forecastle belfry, normally used by the sleepy ship's boys, whose duty it was to keep track of the half-hour and hour glasses, turn them, and ring the bells of the watch.
"Charge both batteries, Mister Catterall," Lewrie ordered. "We don't wish to be taken by surprise. Open the ports and run the guns into battery, both sides… just in case."
"Aye aye, sir!"
A quick look astern satisfied him that the convoy was turning alee, all of them, earlier than scheduled. A quarter-hour longer, and they would have been alerted by Grafton to "Ready About," and, at the proper night signal-a fusee at the end of each foremast royal yard-would have hauled their wind and worn off the wind, as much as one might be expected from civilian shipmasters. Now, they were wearing individually, the most threatened bearing down on the larboard ships, startling them to haul off and fall alee like stampeding sheep, order lost, and if this turned out to be nothing, they'd be half the following day rounding them back up!