Lewrie slung a day-glass over his shoulder and climbed atop a gun-carriage to the top of the larboard bulwarks, then up the mizen mast’s windward shrouds to as far as the cat-harpings below the fighting top. Looping a steadying arm through the stays, he brought the telescope to his eye and felt even less hope than he had evinced at his quick conference with his officers. From his higher perch, he could make out at least seven distinct sets of sails, all of them of three masts. The three leading the line-ahead formation seemed to be one-decked ships, which he judged to be frigates. Astern, though …
Oh, mine arse, he groaned to himself; Those two aft o’ those frigates are two-deckers! Seventy-four-gunned Third Rates? Two more astern o’ them, they look t’be … three-masted sloops of war? What the Frogs call corvettes?
If they were lighter ships, from his own Navy, by this time of the war they would be two-masted brig-sloops, below the Rates, with fewer than twenty guns. But French warships below the Rates would be three-masted, still.
We’re going t’get massacred, he mourned as he shoved the tubes of the telescope shut, re-slung it, and began a slow and cautious descent to the quarterdeck.
“Deck, there!” a main mast lookout shouted down from the cross-trees “Th’ count is seven sail! Seven sail!”
“Rather a lot,” Lt. Westcott softly commented.
“Two of ’em are two-deckers, t’boot,” Lewrie muttered to him. “What looks t’be three frigates in the lead. Hmmm. Unless the pair astern are transports. Might be better odds. But, I don’t see how we could get at them if they are … not past three frigates and two Third Rates. Unless…”
For pity’s sake, think o’ something, ye damned half-wit, Lewrie chid himself.
“Ahem, sir,” the Sailing Master, Mr. Caldwell, interrupted, “but we are standing in toward shoal waters, and should come about to starboard tack to make a long board.”
“Aye, Mister Caldwell,” Lewrie replied with a jerk of his head, impatient to be interrupted whilst he was scheming for some way to go game and hurt the foe, even a little. “Mister Munsell?” he called to the Midshipman standing aft with the Afterguard and the signalmen. “Do you hoist ‘Tack In Succession.’”
“Aye, sir!”
“Ah!” Lewrie exclaimed as one idea did come to him. “The wind is more Nor’east by East, Mister Caldwell?”
“Aye, sir, it is,” Caldwell agreed.
“And our new course would put us on North by West, beating to windward, until—” Lewrie hustled over to the binnacle cabinet, where a chart was pinned to the traverse board for quick reference. “We’ve bags of sea-room all the way to Grand Bahama, so … do we stand on for a good while, then come back to larboard tack when the enemy squadron is no more than a mile or two to windward of us, we will cross their hawses at almost right angles, perhaps close enough to serve them one or two broadsides. Bow-rake the lead ship, at any rate, before wearing alee, and returning to the starboard tack to do it again, before we are overwhelmed … or have to cut and run to block the entrance to the harbour, at last. If we can’t fight ’em on equal terms, then at least we can bloody their noses and let ’em know they’re in for a hard fight!”
“Maybe we should release the weaker ships now, sir,” Wescott suggested in a whisper, leaning his head close to Lewrie’s. “We are the only ship that can engage them with our eighteen-pounders, whilst Lizard’s and Firefly’s six-pounders would have no effect beyond one cable. As for Thorn’s carronades, well … to get them in close enough to do any damage, those lead frigates could just bull on and pass through our line. Simply brush them aside like toy boats.”
“I know it’s hopeless, but we have to try,” Lewrie bleakly said in response, hands folded in the small of his back, and his eyes upon the toes of his boots. “Perhaps at two cables’ range. That’s still cuttin’ it damned fine, but perhaps they don’t know that Thorn only has carronades, and will take the blasts as long eighteens. Just one good broadside from everyone, and then we’ll put about.”
“Very good, sir,” Lt. Westcott replied, his harsh face fixed in stone. There was nothing else he could say that would not be deemed an expression of cowardice in the face of the enemy, or insubordination to a captain’s legal order … no matter how suicidal.
“Sorry I ruined your morning’s pleasure, Mister Westcott,” Alan Lewrie whispered with a faint sketch of a smile. “And, all this.”
“Ah, but you didn’t, sir,” Westcott brightened, his grin flashing a brief show of white teeth. “The alert gun came after the first two main bouts, and only interrupted a second breakfast. One hopes that you at least got to grips, as it were—”
“Never even put a foot ashore, no,” Lewrie rued. “But then, I do admit that you were always quicker off the mark.”
Lucky bloody bastard! Lewrie thought in envy; He’ll go to his Maker, or Hell, much eased, whilst I’ve been without so long, there’s semen squirtin’ from my ears do I sneeze!
* * *
The squadron stood on North by West for a good quarter hour as the strange ships continued up the Northeast Providence Channel, still with no flags flying to identify themselves.
Lewrie paced and fretted, going from the windward bulwarks to the binnacle cabinet and the chart every two or three minutes, guessing how fast that squadron was advancing, and calling for casts of the chip-log to determine his own squadron’s pace. At last …
“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.