Lewrie’s telescope revealed what appeared to be a two-master under gaff-hung lugs’ls and a large jib, all winged out to starboard to cup the dawn’s shore breeze. He looked aloft past the brailed-up main course to the commissioning pendant and how it streamed, judging the direction of the wind, and thinking that if Sapphire came about to Nor’west by West, he could block the two-master’s course for the obvious refuge of Estepona, drive her closer inshore, or force her to go about and attempt to run away to the West, where the only safe haven might be the mouth of a minor river.
Sapphire was slowly bowling along under tops’ls, fore course, spanker, foretopmast stays’l and inner and outer flying jibs, making an easy six or seven knots.
“Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie called down to the quarterdeck. “I will have the main course spread.”
“Aye, sir!” Harcourt crisply replied, lifting a brass speaking trumpet to call for topmen to go aloft to cast off brails, and for halliards and clews to be manned.
Yelland said true dawn’d be ten minutes past six, Lewrie told himself, pulling out his pocket watch. He looked aft into the East, just in time for false dawn to depart, and see the first golden blush of sunrise, which painted the horizon and clouds with deep crimson; “Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning”. There would be more dirty weather to come, and he hoped that they captured the stranger in good time, so he could get his ship out into deeper waters before the new bout of foul weather caught up with them.
“Hull-up, there! Deck, there, th’ sail’s hull-up, and bows-on, still one point off th’ starb’d bows!” the foremast lookout cried.
Not tryin’ t’get away? Lewrie thought, finding that puzzling. If her master had any sense, and there was a single pair of eyes over there, she would have hauled her wind long since.
“Damned if I don’t think she is making straight for us, sir!” Lt. Harcourt called up to Lewrie from his post below, looking eager, but perplexed. “Shall we alter course, sir?”
“No, stand on as we are, Mister Harcourt,” Lewrie decided. “If she’s that blind, I’ll oblige the fool.” He closed the tubes of his telescope and descended the starboard ladderway. “I’ll be aft. Keep me informed, while I have some more coffee, and a bit of breakfast.”
“Aye, sir.”
Once in the great-cabin’s dining-coach, Pettus poured him a fresh cup of coffee. There was a plain white china creampot filled with a few fresh squirts from the nanny goat up forward in the manger, and Pettus had shaved off some sugar from the cone kept in Lewrie’s locking caddy. Yeovill swept in with his food barge even as Lewrie took his first sip, apologising for the sparseness of breakfast, seeing that it was a Banyan Day and all, but he did set out a steaming bowl of oatmeal with a plop of stale butter and treacle, and a boiled egg on the side.
The Marine sentry who guarded the cabin doors stamped boots, slammed his musket butt on the deck, and bawled, “Midshipman Harvey, SAH!”
“Enter!” Lewrie called back.
“Ehm, Mister Harcourt’s duty, sir, and I am to say that the strange sail is still bows-on to us, and shows no sign of fleeing us.”
“My compliments to Mister Harcourt, and he is to stand on. Have the hands eat, Mister Harvey?” Lewrie asked the young Mid.
“I believe they have, sir,” Harvey replied.
“The last look I had of our odd stranger, she’d didn’t appear t’be much of a threat, but I’d admire did Mister Harcourt lead and prepare the six-pounders on forecastle and quarterdeck, and have the Marines turned out under arms.”
“Very good, sir!”
“Bless me, Mister Harvey,” Lewrie brightened, peering closely at the Midshipman’s face, “but do I note that you are in need of a shave?”
“Ehm, yes, sir!” Harvey proudly admitted, stroking his upper lip with a finger.
“A trim of your locks might not go amiss, either, Harvey,” Lewrie said. “Carry on.”
“Aye, sir!”
“Ye wouldn’t have one o’ Chalky’s wee sausages t’spare, do ye, Yeovill?” Lewrie asked, enviously eying the cat at the foot of the table with his head deep in his food bowl.
“Always, sir,” Yeovill said with a twinkle in his eyes.
Happily chewing away, Lewrie returned to the quarterdeck with his telescope to look outboard at their strange, fearless oddity which was now only about two miles off, and still coming on as bold as a dog in a doublet.
“Damn my eyes, but I could swear she looks familiar,” the First Officer, Lt. Westcott, who had come up from the wardroom, vowed. “Now where…?” he wondered.
“She appears just another of the typical coasters hereabouts, Mister Westcott,” Lt. Harcourt said with a shrug, “though her wish to be captured is odd.”
But, by the time that both ships had closed to within one mile of each other, Lewrie had a sneaking feeling that they had seen her once before, too.
“What’s that?” Harcourt barked, lifting his glass to give her another close look. “God’s Teeth, there’s someone waving a British Jack over yonder!”
In Lewrie’s ocular, there was a Red Ensign being wig-wagged at them by someone amidships of her starboard rails, and other people on her decks were waving hats, coats, and shirts at them as if very glad to see them! A moment later, and the strange vessel handed her foresail and began to round up into the wind, hauling her mainsail taut and setting her jib cross-sheeted to fetch-to.
“Damned if we haven’t seen her before,” Lewrie exclaimed. “We took her a month ago. It’s that same filthy old grain barge! Close her near as you may, Mister Harcourt, and prepare to fetch-to.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Harcourt replied, sounding even more perplexed.
* * *
Within a quarter of an hour, both ships were cocked up into the wind, and a rowboat manned by two oarsmen and a tillerman, with two passengers aboard, was stroking for Sapphire’s starboard entry-port.
“Side-party to render honours, sir?” Lt. Harcourt enquired.
“They don’t exactly look Navy t’me, sir,” Lewrie said, looking the newcomers over. “Let’s wait ’til we know who they are.”
The rowboat hooked onto the mainmast channel platform and two men scrambled up the boarding battens to the open entry-port, making Lewrie wonder if King Neptune’s scruffy court had come to call, for both were most oddly dressed, and looked more like itinerant Gypsies.
“Hola, señores!” the first aboard gaily called out, sweeping off a shapeless felt hat to make an exaggerated low bow. He wore a cracked pair of buckled shoes with no stockings, grease-stained and tar-stained slop-trousers, an equally-dirty shirt and a waist-coat made of tan leather. “Hola, amigos! I, Vicente Rodriguez … better known as John Cummings … greet you. I am master of the Gallegos, the splendid ship you seized for me!” He did so in a Spanish accent, then in an accent that put Lewrie in mind of Kent. “And you there on the quarterdeck, I assume would be the gallant Captain Lewrie? Greetings from Mister Thomas Mountjoy, who also expresses his thanks for his fine new vessel!”
“Has the circus come to town?” Lt. Westcott grumbled under his breath.
“I’d wait for the jugglers, first,” Lewrie muttered back, then stepped forward to greet Rodriguez/Cummings. “Welcome aboard, sir. However you name yourself,” he said, offering a hand.
“Allow me to name to you my compatriot, sir,” Rodriguez/Cummings announced, turning to the other new arrival, who had held back behind the loquacious Cummings, peering about with a top-lofty air as if he was amused by it all, or found Sapphire a low-class pigsty. “Mister Romney Marsh, a man of so many identities that they are impossible to enumerate. Romney, this is Captain Sir Alan Lewrie, Baronet.”
“Honoured t’make your acquaintance, sir,” Mr. Marsh said in a clench-jawed Etonian accent, the sort that usually got right up Lewrie’s nose. Marsh offered his hand, then quickly switched to a Bow Bell’s Cockney, “an’ ’aven’t I ’eard o’ you, your ’onour, sir, hah hah!”