“No intrusion, Captain Pomfret,” Westcott said with a laugh and a quick, savage grin. “Watch standing mostly involves standing about, looking attentive. It will be some time before we tack and beat to Quarters. The captain? Captain Lewrie takes nothing for granted, I assure you, but in this case he has grounds for confidence. In the Navy he’s known as the ‘Ram-Cat’, ye know. Not for that cat he keeps in his cabins, but for his way of going after the foe … he earned that early on. I’ve served as his First for four years in two ships, and if anyone can surpass him, I’ll eat my hat. He’s probably been in more actions than most of us have had hot suppers, the Glorious First of June, Saint Vincent, Camperdown … Copenhagen? And many single ship fights in between. He fights clever, though he’ll never believe it of himself. We’re in very good hands, the best of hands.”
“Something for me to write home about, then,” Pomfret decided. “Am I properly equipped for it?”
“Hmm … sword, two pistols, silk shirt and stockings, just in case,” Westcott said, looking him over from head to toe. “Wax in your ears? Good. I think that’ll do quite nicely.”
Lewrie came out of his cabins, after having a quick sponge-off, and loading and priming his weapons. He had changed to a silk shirt and stockings inside his boots, too, though the boots would unravel them something horrid. He wore his Gills’ hanger on his left hip and had clipped his two new over-under double-barrelled pistols to his waistband, and had shoved his side-by-side double-barrelled Mantons in the deep side pockets of his uniform coat.
“You look perfectly piratical, sir,” Lt. Westcott quipped.
“Aarr, and belike,” Lewrie replied in a raspy growl, astonishing Pomfret, who was more used to the grave and sombre command style of senior Army officers. “All I’m lacking are half a dozen more pistols hung round my neck like Blackbeard, and slow-match fuses burnin’ in my hair, hah! Let’s see what the Dons’ve been up to in my absence.”
He snatched his telescope from the binnacle cabinet and went to the poop deck on the leeward side to raise it and peer at them.
“Deck, there!” a lookout bawled. “They’re showin’ Spanish colours!” Lewrie also could make out the bright red-gold-red banners with the crowned coats of arms in the centre.
The leading frigate had hauled her wind slightly, falling off ’til she was in line-ahead of her consort, blending their sails into a single mass in Lewrie’s ocular. Both were well above the horizon, tops’ls and courses towering above the dark hulls, their inner, outer, jibs and foremast stays’ls stretched wind-full and their bowsprits and jib booms thrust up aggressively, bobbing like lance tips of cantering armoured knights. He reckoned that they were no more than five miles off, making at least ten or eleven knots, he judged by the frothing mustachios under their forefeet, and closing the range rapidly.
He lowered his telescope and collapsed the tubes, tapping it on his left palm in thought. The Spanish warships looked to be about more than three points off Sapphire’s larboard bows, perhaps closer to three and a half points; they had lost some ground due to the shift of the winds, and now steered Sou’west by South. He sketched with a fingertip on the cap-rail, their course, his course, and where and when their opposing tracks would intersect.
I’ve got bags of room to tack! he thought with a feral smile.
Six Bells were struck, and a fiddler, a fifer, and a Marine drummer struck up “Molly Dawson”, surprising the crew, who had only partially begun to gather. Bosun Terrell piped Clear Decks And Up Spirits, and the rum keg was fetched up to the belfry. Doling out the rum to all hands and ship’s boys usually took about twenty minutes or so, with men milling round to find those who owed them “sippers” or “gulpers” for past favours, stretching the process out a few minutes more.
He would wait ’til the keg was borne below, and all the brass cups were gathered up before tacking, before sending them all to their guns, again. He returned to the quarterdeck.
“Mister Westcott, pass word to the galley for the fires to be staunched. Dinner’ll have to wait today,” he said. “We’ll come about at Seven Bells, then go to Quarters. As soon as we’re on course to the Sou’west by South, let’s fetch out the anti-boarding nets and rig chain slings aloft on all the yards.”
“Aye, sir,” Westcott replied.
“I wonder…” Lewrie mused aloud. “Our gunnery this morning, it didn’t achieve much, but it was closely grouped round the target, didn’t you think?”
“It was, sir,” Westcott agreed, “with very little left or right of the battery, and we hit the slope just underneath so many times we almost dug down to the foundations.”
“The Spanish’ll fire high, and open at long range, hopin’ that they’ll carry top-masts and spars away t’cripple us. Well, perhaps we can play that game, too, at say, two-thirds of a mile?”
“They won’t be expecting that from a British warship, sir,” Lt. Westcott said, and his grin was positively evil.
“We’ll get to close quarters and hull ’em ’twixt wind and water later on, but in the beginning? Hmm!” Lewrie said, with a smile of his own.
“Wear, sir, not tack,” Westcott suggested. “There’s less of a chance for something aloft to carry away and put us ‘in irons’ at the worst moment. If we miss stays…”
“You’re right, as usual, Geoffrey,” Lewrie agreed. “Aye, we’ll wear instead. That’ll shorten the range a little bit, too.”
He waited, pacing round the quarterdeck from his traditional post at the windward bulwarks to the lee side, forcing himself to be patient, to appear outwardly calm. He petted Bisquit when the dog quit the poop deck and his bone, heading for the lower decks and handouts of food in anticipation of dinner being served. He watched as the rum keg was closed and escorted below by armed Marines, as the Jack In The Breadroom gathered up the cups.
“Pipe All Hands,” Lewrie commanded at last, standing squared on his feet amidships of the quarterdeck by the hammock stanchions, hands in the small of his back and looking down into the crowded waist.
“Ship’s company, face aft and hark to the Captain!” Westcott shouted.
“Lads, recall when I read myself in at the Nore,” Lewrie began in his best quarterdeck voice, “I told you that I would do my best to find a way to turn Sapphire from a boresome escort to a fighting ship. We’ve made a decent start on that, you and I, but today.… Here is your time, here is your morning to win fame for yourselves and this ship, and show those motherless Dons over yonder who really rules the oceans! Are you ready?”
A great, enthusiastic cheer greeted his words. When he raised a hand, and it subsided, he continued.
“In a few minutes, we’ll wear about, and then we’ll beat to Quarters,” he said, “and we will engage the Spanish. You showed me earlier today that you’ve become some of the finest naval gunners in the world, even at a full mile’s range. Do ye think you can do that again? Can ye aim small and hit hard?”
His crew’s response was a hearty growl.
“We’ll take ’em on one at a time, first at long range, then at close quarters, and hammer the bastards ’til they curse the day they thought they could try us on, and curse the moment they clapped eyes on Sapphire! God bless every one of you Sapphires, and our good ship. Now, let’s be about it!”
“Ship’s company, dismiss,” Lt. Westcott ordered, his cry lost in the great, savage din of shouts and huzzahs.
Lewrie looked at the Spanish frigates from the lee bulwarks; they were now a little more than two miles off. It was time.
“Bosun Terrell, pipe Stations To Wear!” he shouted.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
As the helm was put over, HMS Sapphire slowly hauled her wind, falling off from “full and by” with taut canvas eased and loosed, the yards slowly being angled to the opposite tack to the squealing of the wooden balls in the parrels that bound the yards to the masts, amid a rustling thunder of sailcloth, and groans of the masts and the hull timbers, her stern crossing the eye of the wind at last, and her yards re-braced in the proper spiral set from courses to t’gallants. She came back to the edge of the winds, all her sails bellied out, again filled with drive and power.