“There is a chance, sir, that they’re so used to peering shoreward that they may not take too many glances over their shoulders, and we could get very close before they spot us,” Caldwell offered.
“Well, that’ll never do,” Lewrie jovially objected. “I want us t’be seen, and draw her too far out for her to run for Mar del Plata or Bahía Blanca and get away.”
“Deck, there!” the mainmast lookout in the cross-trees yelled. “Th’ Chase’z goin’ about! ’Er bows’z pointin’ South, beam-onta us! She’s fine on th’ starb’d bow!”
“Should we alter course more Sutherly to cut her off, sir?” Lt. Spendlove asked. “Make more sail, perhaps?”
“Hold course for a bit more, sir,” Lewrie told him. “Let’s see if she runs, or she comes about towards us. We’re loafin’ along like a transport, under reduced sail for the night, and on a rough course for enterin’ the Plate. Let’s see if she bites.”
“Deck, there! Chase’z wearin’ about!” came a call from aloft. “Turnin’ Easterly!”
“Well, now!” Lewrie said, beaming with delight. “If the people have finished their breakfast, I’ll have the galley fires cast overboard, Mister Spendlove. Stand on for a bit more, like we’re blind as bats, ’til we can spot her sails above the horizon from the deck, then we can sham panic, and go about. Mister Westcott? I will fetch you the keys to the arms lockers, now. We’ll wait, though, to ‘Beat To Quarters’ ’til she’s much closer. Once I’m back on deck, you can begin to strip down the ship for action.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Westcott crisply replied with a feral gleam in his eyes, eager for the fight to start.
Lewrie went to his cabins, unlocked his desk, and fetched out the keys to the arms lockers and crammed them into a side pocket of his coat. He went to his own weapons rack and strapped on his plain hanger sword, primed his pre-loaded double-barrelled Manton pistols, and stuck them down into his coat pockets, too.
“Is it beginning, sir?” Pettus asked.
“It appears t’be, Pettus,” Lewrie told his steward. “You and Jessop box up the last of my things, and see everything to the orlop, Chalky and the dog, too.”
“I been drillin’ with the other lads, sir,” Jessop piped up. “I can run powder cartridges from the magazines, good as any, now.”
Lewrie paused and cocked his head to look Jessop over; he had come aboard a twelve-year-old waif, and was now almost sixteen, and nigh a grown lad as much like the teenaged topmen who served aloft.
“Very well, Jessop,” Lewrie said with a stern nod. “You wish to do a man’s part, you have my leave t’do so.”
“Thank ye, sir!” Jessop cried, looking so happy that he could turn St. Catherine’s Wheels in delight.
“Luck to the both of you,” Lewrie bade them, stopping to give Chalky a parting petting. The cat was crouched atop his desk, curled up into a wary meat loaf shape, as if he sensed something ominous in Lewrie’s weapons, or the sight of the domed wicker cage that was used to bear him below and out of harm.
Lewrie got back to the quarterdeck and handed Lt. Westcott the arms locker keys. Westcott grimly nodded, then bellowed for word to be passed for the Master-At-Arms and the Ship’s Corporals to come to fetch them. With another nod to Bosun Sprague and his Mate, Wheeler, he gave permission for Quarters to be piped. Lt. Simcock’s Marine drummer and fifer began the Long Roll, then a gay martial air that drew off-watch hands back on deck. One of the ship’s boats was hauled from towing astern and filled with chickens, ducks, rabbits, and quail from the manger, with the nanny goat and her kid, and several squealing piglets. HMS Reliant thundered and drummed to the sounds of deal-and-canvas partitions being struck down and carried to the orlop, of officers’ and seamens’ chests stowed below to turn all of her decks to long, empty spaces from bow to stern, filled only with guns.
Half an hour later, and the frigate was ready for combat, and the only step left was to load, prime, and run out. Lewrie called for everyone to stand easy. He went to the lee bulwarks to larboard and raised a telescope to peer at their stranger past the wind-curved jibs.
“I can make out her t’gallants and tops’ls, now, from the deck,” he said to Lt. Westcott as he crossed back to amidships. “She’ll be hull-up in the next half hour. Time t’shake our lazy night reefs out, Mister Westcott, like our idle merchantmen do, and make more sail … except for the main course, which we’ll have to brail up before fire is opened, anyway. Chain slings on the yards whilst you’re at it, and rig the boarding nettings in-board of the bulwarks, out of sight ’til needed.”
“Aye, sir. Colours?” Lt. Westcott asked, peeking aft at the bare gaff and spanker boom line.
“Not ’til she breaks out hers,” Lewrie decided, pausing, then grinning impishly. “We’ve Spanish Colours in the flag lockers? Damme, I wonder what our stranger’d make o’ that! Or, do we have a British merchant ensign … I wonder which’d tempt him more!”
I’m pretty sure she’s Spanish, Lewrie mulled over to himself as his First Officer tended to making more sail, and the rigging of the slings and anti-boarding nets; I don’t think there’s a Dutch warship in the entire South Atlantic, and God only knows what’d draw a French ship this far afield. A British merchant flag t’lure her on, or show them a Spanish flag, and bring her out to warn a fellow countryman to the British invasion? God, that’d be rich! And she’d be put off her guard, her gun crews stood down.
“Deck there!” a lookout called down. “Th’ Chase’z hoistin’ British Colours!”
“The Devil ye say!” Lewrie barked, going back to the bulwarks to lift his telescope once more. Sure enough, even from the deck, he could make out the merest hint of bright bunting, an imitation of the Union Flag.
“Mine arse on a band-box!” Lewrie hooted. “I’ll wager ye that her captain thinks he’s a clever ‘sly boots’, Mister Westcott! Hoist the Red Ensign, if ye please. Show him we’re a fat, dumb merchantman. And everyone look relieved, haw!” he called to the officers and men on the quarterdeck. He looked aft to watch Midshipman Shannon and the hands of the Afterguard bending on and hoisting the Red Ensign on the spanker’s boom peak. “When we’ve fetched her fully hull-up, we’ll put up our number in this month’s code book, and see what the Dons make of that.”
We can fight her under the Red Ensign, Lewrie thought, tautly smiling; It’s the Navy’s Red Squadron flag, too. Nobody’ll fault me for opening fire under false colours, not this time!
In 1794, when he’d first had command of the old Jester sloop, he hadn’t had false French colours lowered and Navy colours run up before delivering one broadside, and he’d been criticized for it in enemy newspapers, and Nelson himself had torn a strip off his arse.
“Sir!” Midshipman Rossyngton cried from his perch halfway up the larboard mizen mast shrouds. “She’s almost hull-up!”
Lewrie gave him a wave in recognition, then went to the forward edge of the quarterdeck and the cross-deck hammock stanchions. “Mister Spendlove?” he called to the Second Officer, whose post when at Quarters was between the two batteries of guns. “Run in the guns and load, but do not prime … both batteries.”
“Load, but do not prime, aye, sir!” Spendlove called back.
He tried to peer at the enemy warship—for that was what she had revealed herself to be by hoisting false colours—from the larboard corner of the quarterdeck, but the fore course and billowing jibs were in the way. He crossed over to his proper place to windward, and got a better view. She was almost bows-on to Reliant, all of her sail plan now visible above the horizon, and perhaps only nine miles off. She seemed to be hardening up to the wind a point or so, trying to sneak up and steal the wind gage, intending to pass close aboard and deliver her first broadside from her starboard guns into Reliant’s starboard side.