“Deck, there!” a lookout yelled down. “Chase is one point off the starb’d bows!”
“We are chasing her, now,” Lewrie told them with a laugh, “even if she doesn’t know it, yet. We can now call her a ‘Chase’. Once she spots us and tries to run … what will she be then, Mister Munsell?” he asked the nearest Midshipman of the Watch, who had been listening.
“An ‘Enemy Then Flying’, sir!” Munsell quickly piped up.
“Well, I for one wish she takes no notice of us ’til after the galley fires have been lit, and I can have a cup of strong coffee, or two,” Lt. Westcott said with a groan and a long, wide yawn.
“I fear we’ll be silhouetted against the dawn, perhaps even by the false dawn, long before that,” Lewrie commented as he looked up at the sails, almost lost in the darkness. “Today’s a Banyan Day, at any rate. The best we may expect’ll be small beer, cheese, and bisquit. Hot porridge’ll be out of the question.”
“Well, damme,” Westscott said, yawning again.
“Have a bad night of it, did you?” Lewrie asked in jest.
“Tossed and turned, even after a stiff brandy,” Westcott said with a shrug.
“That’s more due the Sailing Master’s snores,” Lt. Simcock told Lewrie. “I compare them to a beach full of sea lions, but Merriman’s of the opinion he sounds more like a whole warehouse full of rolling casks. Back and forth, rumble, rumble, rumble!”
“He’s the loudest in the Middle Watch,” Westcott said with a grimace, “right in the middle of my most vivid dreams!”
“Hmm, the lookouts aloft are most-like seeing our ghost by her taffrail lanthorns,” Lewrie speculated, looking up again at the masts. “It’s still too dark to see her sails. That puts her hull-up above the night horizon from them. That’d be … inside twelve miles of visibility, perhaps about eight.
“Mister Spendlove?” Lewrie said, turning to the Officer of the Watch. “What is the last cast of the log?”
“Six knots, sir,” Spendlove answered.
“Very well. Let’s take one reef in the main course to slow us down a bit,” Lewrie ordered. “I’d like our stranger to only see our t’gallants by false dawn, which’ll be about an hour and a half from now. She just might think we’re a transport fetching re-enforcements, and come out to us.”
“Or, she might spook and run, sir,” Westcott cautioned.
“Aye, but run to where, sir?” Lewrie posed, grinning. “South, I think. The winds are fair for Mar del Plata down the coast, or to Bahía Blanca, if she needs a hidey-hole. Perhaps that’s where she’s come from in the first place, and got word of our invasion overland. We knew almost nothing but rumours and fantasies about the Argentine before we invaded it, and the Plate Estuary’s a bad place to maintain warships, what with all the shoals and banks, as we’ve discovered.”
“Main mast captain and crew!” Spendlove was bellowing through a brass speaking-trumpet. “Trice up, lay out, and take one reef in the main course!”
Westcott and Simcock began to pace to kill the time, even if they were strictly not on watch, and could have gone below once the wash-deck pumps were stowed away. Westcott’s yawning had infected Lewrie, and, after a few more minutes standing stern and stoic by the forward windward corner of the quarterdeck, he felt his eyelids lowering and his head nodding. He shook himself several times to try and stay awake, but when he caught himself leaning on the bulwarks, with an arm threaded through the shrouds to stay upright, he surrendered to the moment. He called for his collapsible wood-and-canvas deck chair and had himself a sit-down, and allowed himself a little nap before the sun came up, and the game would be afoot.
“Think we’re in for a scrape this mornin’?” one of the Quartermasters on the helm, Baldock, asked Master’s Mate Hook.
“Sounds like it,” Hook whispered back.
“Cap’m don’t look worried,” Baldock said as he eased a spoke or two. “Might come out aright, then.”
“Wager ya he’s schemin’ on how t’beat ’em, this very minute,” Hook assured him with a grin. “Cap’m knows how t’win, and fight. Seen it before, when I was in the old Proteus with him, and God help Frogs, Dons, and Dutchies … any o’ the King’s enemies.”
Up forward, and un-heard by Baldock and Hook on the helm, the “fighting” Captain Alan Lewrie, RN, snorted as his chin drooped onto his chest.
* * *
Ting-Ting! Ting!
“Umph.”
The striking of Three Bells of the Morning Watch pulled Lewrie from his nap with a grunt. He raised his head a few degrees and saw that the false dawn had crept up on Reliant from the East, astern of her, while he had drowsed. His ship was once more a solid thing from the bulwark beside him to the out-thrust tip of the jib-boom, though still an indefinite greyness.
He stood, and looked forward in search of the strange intruder, but she was still below the horizon from his vantage on the quarterdeck, as was the Plate Estuary and the Argentine coast. Far enough to sea beyond the jungles and the estuary, there was no hint of the daily fogs, either; what he could see of the sea’s horizon was as flat and sharp-edged as a table top. Closer to, the sea was not the ink-black of night, but had lightened to a slate grey, flecked here and there with lighter grey foaming wave crests, like dirty wash suds.
Aloft, the intricate maze of both standing and running rigging was a spider web done in charcoal, and the sails still colourless, almost indistinguishable from a rainy-day overcast. Even the bright red-white-blue commissioning pendant that streamed off towards the larboard bows might just as well been a long hank of rope.
“I miss anything?” Lewrie asked after he paced over to the iron hammock stanchions at the forward break of the quarterdeck to speak to Lt. Spendlove.
“No, sir,” Spendlove replied, “we’re standing on as before at about five knots. The lookouts report that the Chase is still burning her taffrail lanthorns, and that they can now make out her t’gallants.”
“Very good, carry on, sir,” Lewrie said, turning to note that Mr. Caldwell, the Sailing Master, was now on deck. “Dawn, sir?”
“Full dawn at fifteen minutes after six, sir,” Caldwell said. “It is now half past five, and a bit.”
The decks had been washed, scoured, and were now almost dry. The wash-deck pumps had been stowed away, and only the duty watch was on deck. Lewrie caught the scent of burning firewood from the galley funnel.
“Larbowlines at their breakfast?” he asked.
“Hot porridge, sir,” Lt. Spendlove said.
“Let’s make sure the starboard watch division has their breakfast before we shut the galley down,” Lewrie said. “I suppose Mister Westcott has got his coffee, at last? Hah, good! Pass word for my steward. I could use a bowl of porridge, and a mug of coffee, too.”
Four Bells were struck at 6 A.M., as the skies astern lightened even more, and the indefinite greyness of the sails, the ship, and the sea took on vivid “early-early” colour, as if this day would come fresh-laundered after the worn drabness of the day before. The airs were cool and refreshing, the nippiness of night quickly forgotten as a breeze scented with deep-sea iodine and salt freshened. Inshore, in the estuary, there would be fogs and overcasts, but this far out to sea, the skies promised lots of sunshine and few clouds.
“Deck, there!” a lookout called down. “Th’ Chase’z doused ’er lights! One point orf th’ starb’d bows!”
Lewrie paced down to the helm, and the chart pinned to the traverse board. He picked up one of the Sailing Master’s brass dividers to measure off distances, then looked astern at the dawn. Mr. Caldwell shared a look with him, gazed sternward himself for a moment, and drew out his own pocket watch.
“Seven minutes ’til dawn proper, sir,” Caldwell adjudged.
“By the casts of the log, we’ve made up fifteen miles of Westing, and should be about twelve miles astern of our spook,” Lewrie determined. “She should be spottin’ us soon, now, if our top-masts are above the horizon … unless they’re blind as bats, o’ course.”