"I know that ship also," Hal shouted, on the wind. "There, now! I can even recognize her figurehead. She's the Goddess. I know of no other ship on this ocean with a naked Venus at her bowsprit."
"Captain Richard Lister, it is," Sir Francis agreed. "I feel easier for having him here. He's a good man though, God knows, I trust neither of them all the way."
As the Buzzard came sailing in down the channel past the gun emplacements, he must have picked out the bright spot of Sir Francis's cloak against the lichen covered rocks, for he dipped his standard in salute.
Sir Francis lifted his Hat in acknowledgement, but grated between his teeth, "I'd rather salute you with a bouquet of grape, you Scottish bastard. You've smelt the spoils, have you? You're come to beg or steal, is that it? But how did you know?"
"Father!" Hal shouted again. "Look there, in the futtock shrouds I'd know that grinning rogue anywhere. That's how they knew. He led them here."
Sir Francis swivelled his glass. "Sam Bowles. It seems that even the sharks could not stomach that piece of carrion. I should have let his shipmates deal with him while we had the chance."
The Gull moved slowly past them, reducing sail progressively, as she threaded her way deeper into the lagoon. The Goddess followed her, at a cautious distance. She also flew the croix pott6e at her masthead, along with the cross of St. George and the Union flag. Richard Lister was also a Knight of the Order. They picked out his diminutive figure on his quarterdeck as he came to the rail and shouted something across the water that was jumbled by the wind.
"You are keeping strange company, Richard." Even though the Welshman could not hear him, Sir Francis waved his Hat in reply. Lister had been with him when they captured the Heerlycke Nacht, they had shared the spoils amicably, and he counted him a friend. Lister should have been with them, Sir Francis and the Buzzard while they spent those dreary months on blockade off Cape Agulhas. However, he had missed the rendezvous in Port Louis on the island of Mauritius. After waiting a month for him to appear, Sir Francis had been obliged to accede to the Buzzard's demands, and they had sailed without him.
"Well, we'd best put on a brave face, and go to greet our uninvited guests," Sir Francis told Hal, and went down to the beach as Daniel brought the longboat across the channel between the heads.
As they rowed back up the lagoon the two newly arrived vessels lay at anchor in the main channel. The Gull of Moray was only half a cable's length astern of the Resolution. Sir Francis ordered Daniel to steer directly to the Goddess. Richard Lister was at the entry port to greet him as he and Hal came aboard.
"Flames of hell, Franky. I heard the word that you had taken a great prize from the Dutch. Now I see her lying there at anchor." Richard seized his hand. He did not quite stand as tall as Sir Francis's shoulder but his grip was powerful. He sniffed the air with the great florid bell of his nose, and went on, in his singing Celtic lilt, "And is that not spice I smell on the air? I curse me self for not having found you at Port Louis."
"Where were you, Richard? I waited thirty-two days for you to arrive."
"It grieves me to have to admit it but I ran full tilt into a hurricane just south of Mauritius. Dismasted me and blew me clear across to the coast of St. Lawrence Island."
"That would be the same storm that dismasted the Dutchman." Sir Francis pointed across the channel at the galleon. "She was under-jury-rig when we captured her. But how did you fall in with the Buzzard?"
"I thought that as soon as the Goddess was fit for sea again I would look for you off Cape Agulhas, on the off chance that you were still on station there. That's when I came across him. He led me here."
"Well, it's good to see you, my old friend. But, tell me, do you have any news from home?" Sir Francis leaned forward eagerly. This was always one of the foremost questions men asked each other when they met out here beyond the Line. They might voyage to the furthest ends of the uncharted seas, but always their hearts yearned for home. Almost a year had passed since Sir Francis had received news from England.
At the question, Richard Lister's expression turned sombre. "Five days after I sailed from Port Louis I fell in with Windsong, one of His Majesty's frigates. She was fifty six days out from Plymouth, bound for the Coromandel coast."
"So what news did she have?" Sir Francis interrupted impatiently.
"None good, as the Lord is my witness. They say that all of England was struck by the plague, and that men, women and children died in their thousands and tens of thousands, so they could not bury them fast enough and the bodies lay rotting and stinking in the streets."
"The plague!" Sir Francis crossed himself in horror. "The wrath of God."
"Then while the plague still raged through every town and village, London was destroyed by a mighty fire. They say that the flames left hardly a house standing."
Sir Francis stared at him in dismay. "London burned? It cannot be! The King is he safe? Was it the Dutch that put the torch to London? Tell me more, man, tell me more."
"Yes, the Black Boy is safe. But no, this time it was not the Dutch to blame. The fire was started by a baker's oven in Pudding Lane and it burned for three days without check. St. Paul's Cathedral is burned to the ground and the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange, one hundred parish churches and God alone knows what else besides. They say that the damage will exceed ten million pounds."
"Ten millions!" Sir Francis stared at him aghast. "Not even the richest monarch in the world could rise to such an amount. Why, Richard, the total Crown revenues for a year are less than one million!
It must beggar the King and the nation."
Richard Lister shook his head with gloomy relish. "There's more bad news besides. The Dutch have given us a mighty pounding. That devil, de Ruyter, sailed right into the Medway and the Thames. We lost sixteen ships of the line to him, and he captured the Royal Charles at her moorings in Greenwich docks and towed her away to Amsterdam."
"The flagship, the flower and pride of our fleet. Can England survive such a defeat, coming as it does so close upon the heels of the plague and the fire?"
Lister shook his head again. "They say the King is suing for peace with the Dutch. The war might be over at this very moment. It may have ended months ago, for all we know."
"Let us pray most fervently that is not so." Sir Francis looked across at the Resolution. "I took that prize barely three weeks past. If the war was over then, my commission from the Crown would have expired. My capture might be construed as an act of piracy."
"The fortunes of war, Franky. You had no knowledge of the peace. There is none but the Dutch will blame you for that." Richard Lister pointed with his inflamed trumpet of a nose across the channel at the Gull of Moray. "It seems that my lord Cumbrae feels slighted at being excluded from this reunion. See, he comes to join us."
The Buzzard had just launched a boat. It was being rowed down the channel now towards them, Cumbrae himself standing in the stern. The boat bumped against the Goddess's side and the Buzzard came scrambling up the rope ladder onto her deck.