Pettus came out of the great-cabins with Chalky in his wicker cage. “Strip your cabins, sir?” he asked.
“Not unless yon ship turns herself into a ship of the line, no, Pettus,” Lewrie told him with a wee chuckle. “I don’t see us takin’ damage from the likes of her.”
After a few minutes, Sapphire had strode up a mile closer to the stranger, which was now four points off the larboard bows, a sure sign that they were overtaking her at a good clip. A few minutes more and their Chase loomed larger, at three points off the bows, altering course more Northerly to string out the pursuit into a stern chase.
“Colours!” was the general cry on the quarterdeck as a faded Spanish merchant flag, a “gridiron” of two horizontal red stripes on a gold field, jerkily went up her stern gaff.
At least she’s declared herself, Lewrie thought; But she ain’t slowin’ down, or lookin’ relieved that we’re both Spanish.
Sapphire, so the Sailing Master estimated, was within four or five miles of the coast, and the narrow band of plains and foothills were in plain sight, sprinkled with woods, pastures, and cropfields, with hamlets and villages set back from the sea easily made out from the deck. He also stated that they were within two miles of their Chase.
“We’ll stand on a bit more,” Lewrie announced as he rocked on the balls of his boot soles.
Three miles from shore, within a mile of the straining Spanish ship, and Lewrie decided that it was time to end the charade.
“Mister Westcott, a shot under her bows, and strike our false colours, and run up the Red Ensign!” he barked.
One of the forecastle 6-pounders barked, hurling a shot that did not quite deliver the traditional warning; it struck the sea short of the Spanish vessel, caromed up from First Graze, and raised a great feather of spray right along her starboard side. Charitably, it did hit her forward of amidships; more near her bows than under.
Have the foc’sle Quarter Gunner tear a strip off that gun-captain’s arse, too, Lewrie added to his to-do list; He’s damaged her, he pays for the bloody repairs!
“Ah, hmm, sir,” Lt. Westcott muttered, shaking his head. “Bad show, that.”
“Let’s hope no one who matters is watching, then,” Lewrie told him, grimacing. “Is she going to strike, or do we have to shoot her to kindling?”
The Spaniard still stood on, even bearing up more towards the coast, as if she would run herself aground rather than be taken, showing a bit more of her stern transom to them.
“The first two twelve-pounders of the larboard battery, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie snapped. “Convince the bastards!”
The order was passed by Midshipman Ward, who darted down from the quarterdeck to the waist, then to the upper gun deck. Nigh one minute passed before the gun-ports were opened and the black muzzles of the 12-pounders appeared. There was another pause as gun-captains waited for the ship to roll upright and poise level, on the up-roll. The first gun erupted, followed a second later by the next, masking Sapphire’s bows in a cloud of rotten-egg, yellow-grey smoke.
Lewrie lifted his telescope to look for the fall of shot, and felt like whooping aloud as one tall feather of spray heaved upwards within fifty yards of the Spaniard’s larboard quarter, and the second hit the sea short and skipped, punching a neat hole in her foresail.
“That’s more like it, sir,” Lt. Westcott said with glee as the ragged and faded Spanish flag was not simply struck, but cut clean away to flutter down into the two-master’s disturbed wake. Halliards were freed, and her gaff booms sagged, as her sails were lowered in quick surrender.
“Take in sail and fetch-to near her, Mister Westcott,” Lewrie ordered. “Ready the boarding party. Secure from Quarters.”
* * *
Half an hour later, and both vessels were lying still near each other, bows cocked up to windward and slowly drifting on wind and currents. Marine Lieutenant Roe, with five private Marines, and a boarding party under Midshipman Britton, secured their prize and searched her, and her crew, for weapons, and her master’s cabin for incriminating documents.
Lewrie paced the quarterdeck and the poop deck in mounting impatience, waiting for a report. The Spaniard seemed about right for Mountjoy’s covert work; she was about fifty feet on the range of the deck, filthy-looking, outwardly ill-maintained, and utterly unremarkable if she was seen anywhere along the coasts of Andalusia, even if she sailed right into Málaga, Cartagena, or the Spanish naval port of Cádiz in broad daylight. But, if the lone accidental hit by a six-pound roundshot had caused damage below her waterline, or right on it, she might sink before she could be gotten back to Gibraltar, and the day’s work would be for nothing.
Even if we do get her back to Gibraltar, I can’t declare her as a prize, so Captain Middleton can’t get any money from the Prize-Court to make repairs, Lewrie fretted; She’s completely off the books!
“The Devil with it!” Lewrie growled, then went down to the quarterdeck. “Mister Westcott, a boat crew for the pinnace, and pass word for Bosun Terrell. I’m going over to her.”
“Aye, sir.”
He tried to appear calm and patient, but it was difficult as he stood by the larboard entry-port waiting for the pinnace to be towed up from astern, a boat crew assembled under former Cox’n Crawley, and the Bosun to be filled in.
“She ain’t much of a prize, sir,” Terrell commented, shifting his quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other. “No great loss if she goes down.”
“She could be useful, even so, Mister Terrell,” Lewrie told him, mystifying the Bosun even more.
* * *
Lewrie did not relish small-boat work, and it was not the preservation of the dignity of his office and rank that made every embarking and departure from ship to shore, from ship to ship, a slow and careful evolution. Alan Lewrie could not swim!
When the pinnace came alongside the Spanish prize, he felt an even more stomach-chilling frisson of dread, for the boat was pitching, the Spaniard was rolling, and there were no orderly boarding battens and taut man-ropes, but only a pair of man-ropes dangling free and the mainmast shroud platform for an intermediate shelf. There wasn’t even an entry-port let into the bulwarks; he would have to crawl over!
He stood on the boat’s gunn’ls, balancing like a squirrel on a clothesline, a hand on the shoulders of a couple of sailors, ’til he felt the boat rise, saw the prize roll to starboard, and leapt for a death-grip on one of the dangling ropes, one foot scrambling against the hull for a terrifying second before getting the other onto the shroud platform. He clung to the stays, found a foothold on one of the dead-eye blocks, and could reach up to begin scaling the skinny ratlines, hoping that they were stronger and newer than they looked.
After a few cautious feet higher, he could swing in-board with a foot atop the bulwark cap-rail, then jump down to the deck, hiding a huge sense of relief.
“Ehm … welcome aboard, sir,” Marine Lieutenant Roe said.
“Mister Roe, Mister Britton,” he replied, tapping two fingers on his hat brim. “What is her condition?”
“Filthy and reeking, sir,” Roe replied, sounding chipper. “She trades out of Málaga, so far as I can make out from her papers, and is bound home … was, rather … with a general cargo of flour and un-ground grain, rice, and some sort of meal recorded as cous cous, whatever the Devil that is. She also carries cheese, sausages, wine, coffee beans, and sugar.”
“How many prisoners?” Lewrie asked, turning to his mid-twenties Midshipman Britton.
“Her captain, cook, one mate, four hands, and a couple of boys, sir,” Britton reported. “A scruffy lot.”
Lewrie looked over at the Spaniards who were huddled atop the midships cargo hatch gratings, surrounded by Roe’s Marines with their bayonets affixed to their muskets. At his glance, her captain and a couple of others began to gabble their distress at him, either begging or cursing for all that Lewrie could tell.