The Gun Ketch (32 page)

"Very well, sir," Fellows agreed.

By six bells of the Day Watch, three in the afternoon, it was clear that this was no average tropic squall line. The horizon astern had darkened to a deep slate gray, shot through widi ragged sizzles of distant lightning at the base. The high-piled white clouds of morning had turned gray and lowering, and raced themselves overhead to loo'rd. They took in the outer jibs, reefed the gaff courses once, then for a second time, before wearing ship north for shelter, with
Alacrity
laid over on her larboard side, the wake creaming within arm's reach of the deck as she swooped and bounded fast as a Cambridge Coach, darting for safety like a low-flying tern. It was one thing to trust their stout little vessel in deep water in a full gale, but this had the smell of a bad 'un... an out-of-season hurricane.

The first sprinkles of rain hit them as they beat into harbour around Settlement Point, short-tacking easterly, and the wind gusted from the east-sou'east hard enough to make it difficult to breathe.

"About here, sir!" Fellows had to shout in Lewrie's ear. "Best bower, then second bower out there, to south'rd of the first!"

"Ready, forrud!" Lewrie yelled through a speaking trumpet "Mister Neill, be ready to tack her. Ready, Mister Harkin? Helm up and meet her 'midships! Jesus, let go forrud!"

Alacrity
rounded up, everything lashing and flogging, and came to a stop in her own length against the winds as the best bower anchor splashed into the harbour.

"Larboard your helm! Let go main course halyards! Back forrud sheets!" Lewrie called.
Alacrity
almost spun like a fallen leaf over to the opposite tack, and began to sail away to starboard, driven by a triple-reefed after-course and an inner jib reduced to little more than a storm trys'l, the best bower hawser paying off abeam, howling through the hawsehole! "Round up, Mister Neill! Meet her! Let go second bower!"

And pray both the bitches bite, Lewrie thought,
as Alacrity
paid off the wind, with both anchors out, each placed forty-five degrees off her bows!

"Hand the courses, hand the jibs!"

Down came the last scraps of sail, leaving
Alacrity
drifting to the west, at the mercy of Cross Bay's sandy bottom. Should the anchors fail to hold, she would be wafted onto coral a couple of miles astern before they could get a way on her again!

She snubbed! The best bower anchor, weighted with thirty feet of fist-thick chain and a two-pounder brass boat-gun to ease the jerking which might dislodge the flukes, had held! And a moment later, so did the second bower, similarly weighted on its rode.

"Mister Harkin, pay out half a cable on each hawser and even the scopes!" Lewrie called, then turned to Ballard. "You wanted delegated action at Conch Bar, Mister Ballard? Now you have it! Off you go! Make it quick before the storm's really upon us!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" Ballard replied, summoning his boat crews. They would row out the stream and kedge anchors from astem and set them down to match the angles from the bow cables. "Cony, Odrado, let's go!"

* * * *

It took an hour of juggling and pulley-hauley to equalize scope on the cables. By then, as the hands fell exhausted from the capstans, the storm was upon them, and a curtain of furious rain sheeted over the decks, blanking out all vision beyond a couple of feet, blowing so hard it was nearly horizontal. Lightning forked and arced around them, one explosion striking the island, the next so close-aboard their hair went on end, and the thunderclaps were so loud and continuous it felt like
Alacrity
was being hulled by thirty-two-pounder fortress guns, making the deck tremble and leap as the rigging and masts wailed an unearthly, eldritch chorus of harpy's shrieks.

Lewrie was wet right through, the rain driving past tarred tarpaulin coat and hat like they were gauze, soaking breeches and shirt. Cool as the rain was in the winds, he was clammy and hot beneath, and stiff with blown salt-water, cloth flogging painfully.

With the storm had come unnatural, eerie nightfall, a yellow-green dusk torn by lightning bursts on either hand. Trees ashore bent and tossed, sickly green. Palmetto fronds and leaves came slapping in the air to cling wetly for a moment, then be torn away to swirl aft.

Alacrity
jerked, trembled and snubbed on bow cables, on stern cables, tossing her head like a colt being held to be saddled.

"What's astern should we drag?" Alan asked Fellows in one of the few partings of the rain in which they could take bearings.

"Little Bahama Bank, sir!" Fellow shouted back. "What the Dons called 'The Great Shallows'! Miles and miles of coral heads and reefs!"

Alacrity
was whirled by a gust, drove forward, and snubbed on a stern cable hard enough to make them stumble before paying back to jerk on best bower, then second bower, making the cables groan on the bitts!

Hellish sunset became black night, blue black with lightning frying iron gray rain clouds that brushed the mast-trucks, with the winds moaning all about like a witches' coven. But it was not a cyclone, not a hurricane—just a terrifying winter storm, and it finally blew out by four bells of the evening watch. The rain drummed vertical and with less punishing force, thinned at last, then ceased. The clouds parted to the east, revealing a late moon and a few kindly stars, even though Cross Bay still tossed and churned, and
Alacrity
continued to quiver.

Soon, the winds eased to half a gale, with lulls between gusts. They could see the storm astern now, a spectral sea battle raging on the leeward horizon as it tore across the Gulf Stream and the Florida Channel, a wall of blackness supported by a thousand legs of flaring lightning strokes, like blue fires on dark velvet.

"Not a millpond yet, sir," Ballard commented, grunting with a weariness brought on by tension and fear. "But it's over, praise God."

"Calm enough to suit me, Arthur," Lewrie muttered. "You turn in and get some rest. Set regular anchor watches and a harbour watch. I think our people have earned some sleep at last."

"And you, sir?" Ballard inquired.

"Dry clothes, and a boat cloak, and I'll doss down in my deck chair. I'll take the middle watch," Lewrie offered, aching though he was with exhaustion, and the blessed release of being spared disaster.

"No, sir, you turn in," Ballard objected almost truculently.
"I
normally stand the middle."

"Damme, Arthur, you're silly enough to offer, I'll give you no arguments," Lewrie smiled for the first time since midday. "Call me at eight bells, my 'normal' time, then."

"Aye, aye, Alan. Our normal routine," Ballard said shyly.

"And damned glad of it!" Lewrie commented as he went below.

There were, for once, lashings of fresh water aboard, sluiced into barrels from all the rain, and Lewrie, after waking from gummy-eyed sleep, was enjoying the pleasure of a bath from a lavish five-gallon bucket, when he heard a lookout cry that a ship was entering harbour.

He dressed quickly in clean clothing and dashed to the deck.

"Warship, sir," Lieutenant Ballard informed him as he lowered his telescope. "A sloop of war.
Whippet,
I do avow."

Lewrie borrowed the telescope to eye her himself. Yes, it was Commander Benjamin Rodgers's
Whippet,
of the bright redgunwales and a lower-steeved jib boom than the older sloop of war on station. A recognition signal flew from her main yard.

"Mister Mayhew, hoist this month's private signal in reply," Lewrie ordered. He gave Ballard his telescope back and scratched his chin, which still wanted shaving. "Cony, we'll breakfast Commander Rodgers, more'n like. And where's my coffee?"

" Tis a'comin' this minute, sir," Cony assured him.

" 'Nother hoist, sir!" Mayhew piped from the bulwarks, clinging to the starboard stays. "She's flying 'Make Sail,' sir. And here is a third, sir! 'Take Station on Me'!"

"Then we won't have breakfast ourselves," Lewrie spat. "Mister Ballard, pipe 'All Hands' and prepare to single up to the best bower. Mister Mayhew? Hoist 'Anchor,' then numeral Four, and hope he gets our sense."

Whippet
prowled north and south off the coast, with "Make Haste" flying continually, until
Alacrity
had taken in all her anchors, made sail, and joined her. Once out of harbour,
Whippet
hoisted "Captain Repair On Board" and left it flying until Lewrie was in his gig, and being rowed across to her.

"Took you long enough," Rodgers commented sourly, so unlike his usual merry style.

"Your pardons, sir, but I had four anchors to get up after we took refuge from the storm last night. I trust our signals..."

"What, you no-sailor, you!" Rodgers laughed suddenly, becoming his charming self again. "Runnin' into a hurricane hole at the first half-gale? What's the Navy comin' to, I ask you?"

"You rode it out, I see, sir," Lewrie said, peering about the deck at the sailmaker and his crew who were stitching madly, at the hands aloft still reeving new stays and halyards.

"Had to lay-to with a single trys'l jib, a Spanish-reefed main tops'l, and the spanker at three reefs," Rodgers boasted. "Put out a sea anchor, and I was just about ready to spill ev'ry drop of oil we had, 'fore the storm passed. Nasty one. Had I been closer inshore, I'd have been tempted. Damaged, are you?"

"No, sir. Small stuff, mostly, easily set right."

"Good!" Rodgers exulted, cracking his palms together. "Damned good! There's work afoot, Lewrie! More bloody pirates!"

"Didn't know there was winter traffic enough to prey on, sir."

"Ran across a Spanish three-master yesterday off Great Isaac at the mouth of the Providence Channel. Thought it suspicious that she was makin' nor-nor'east close-hauled, as if she were goin' to put in for Grand Bahama, when there's not much here. Smugglers or banned traders, I thought at first. But when we got her hull-up, We saw a schooner with her, and then she flies up in-irons and ail-aback, and the schooner scoots off north fast as her little legs'd carry her. She'd been pirated, by God! Chased them until the storm came up, and then it was 'save y'rself!"

"Might have gone down in the storm, sir," Lewrie suggested.

"Only port on their course was here by Settlement Point, where they could strip their prize in private," Rodgers went on. "That's why I peeked in here, t'see if they'd sheltered an' hadn't cleared harbour yet. You saw no other vessel at all?"

"Once we got the anchors set, I couldn't see farther than the end of my arm, for all the rain, sir," Lewrie had to admit. "No."

"Damn!" Rodgers spat, all but stamping his foot on the deck in frustration. "Damn!" he reiterated. "She was too small to ride out a storm like that Smaller'n your little
Alacrity.
I was so sure..."

"Might have sheltered 'round north of us, sir, nearer the Bank, and we'd never have known it," Lewrie commiserated. "By Indian Cay."

Damme, all this folderol for nothing, then, he griped to himself? And I still haven't had me breakfast! Hmm... still...!

"Ah, sir," Lewrie added. "You took their prize back, and they were running here."

"The storm, dammit!" Rodgers groused.

"Not in the morning, sir," Lewrie said slyly. "And once they were aware a storm was building, they
still
ran for a lee shore during the afternoon? Doesn't make sense. Unless they had someplace specific in mind. Some hidey-hole. An uninhabited cay somewhere in the Little Bahama Bank where they felt snug. And a place to ride out a storm."

"Damme, but you're a knacky 'un, Lewrie! Of course!" Rodgers realized with a grin. "Where they thought
Whippet
couldn't follow 'em! You were right about Doyle's hideout, you may be right in this. Now look you here, sir."

"Aye, sir?"

"I draw twelve feet forrud, so I dasn't risk the Banks, but I could cruise offshore. You draw ... ?"

"Eight and a half, sir," Lewrie replied, getting a sudden onset of nerves. Damme, here we go again, tiptoeing through coral!

"North of Memory Rock yonder, there's a ten-fathom pass," Commander Rodgers schemed, oblivious to the harm
Alacrity
might suffer on this mission. "Mister Cargyle! Chart!" he shouted over his shoulder to summon his sailing master the way one would shout for a slow-coach waiter. "Ah, here! We
both
could enter. I'lltake the deeper water between Middle Shoal and the Lily Sand Bank, nor'east across the Bank to just north of Matanilla Reef.
Alacrity
will go inshore of me to exit through the Walker's Cay Channel farther south and east, and we meet up there. Then we'll both have a peek at Walker's Cay. 'Tis a famous pirate's lair of old. Mayhap these buggers're usin' it again!"

"Aye, aye, sir," Lewrie answered, knowing what Lieutenant Coltrop down in the Turks had felt like at last.

"Don't get too close to Walker's Cay, don't spook 'em out too soon, Captain Lewrie," Rodgers warned him. "If they're there."

"Should I be so fortunate as to get across the Bank in a whole vessel, I'll not, sir," Lewrie commented wryly.

"Still have that Trinity House sailing master, Gatacre aboard?"

"No, sir," Lewrie sighed. "Commodore Garvey promoted his first officer off
Royal Arthur
into the schooner I took, and sent 'Dread-Nought' away to survey the east coast of Andros."