H. M. S. Cockerel, page 14
“Where away?” Lieutenant Braxton on the quarterdeck demanded.
“ Two points off t’ star b’rd bow, sir!” came the singsong reply, like the wail of a passing soul. “T’ gall -ants! Three . . . FOUR! Four, sir! Four sets o’ t’ gall -ants!”
“A French squadron out for prizes, I’ll wager!” Lewrie yelped with sudden joy.
“Convoy, p’rhaps, sir!” Scott countered, whooping fit to bust with his own excitement. “Rice ships from New Orleans? East Indiamen, loaded gunn’l-down! Prize money, sir! Lashings of it! Action, at last!”
“Maybe salvation, at last!” Alan hooted, clapping Scott on the shoulder.
Cockerel had gone to Quarters, with a purpose for once. Drums rattled, fifes peeped, the ship rang to the slamming of doors as the temporary partitions were struck below to the orlop. The cabin furnishings were removed to a place of safety, and to lessen the danger of splinters. The gun deck and the mess deck became two long roadways, bare of any fittings or comforts. Sand was slung to give gunners and gun carriages a grip on the white-sanded planking. Fire buckets were topped up, slow match was lit and coiled in case the flintlock strikers of the artillery failed to work. In case they had to board a foe, the weapons chests were flung open, and pistols, muskets and cutlasses were distributed, piled ’round the bases of the masts below the wicked pikes in their beckets.
Twelve minutes it took to convert Cockerel into a vessel ready for battle, a little slower than the previous day’s drill, Alan noted, but still a respectable time. Perhaps the hands were clumsier and more nervous than before, since it was a real foe they’d be spying out.
“Give us three points free, quartermaster. Steer east-nor’east,” Captain Braxton commanded, sounding grumpy and out-of-sorts. “Mister Braxton, signal to Windsor Castle: ‘Enemy In Sight.’”
“Aye aye, sir,” the midshipman snapped, turning aft to the taff-rails. A moment later, the proper signal flag soared aloft on a light halliard. With a jerk of the line, when it was “two-blocked” as high as it would go, the bunting bale burst open.
“Deck, there!” the lookout howled. “ Tops’ls, now! Tops’ls ’re ’bove t’ ’orizon, sir! FIVE chase, now, sir! Five chase!”
“We’re overhauling ’em damn’ fast,” Lewrie exulted. He looked aloft. The signal flag was streaming at an odd angle, which made him frown. The westerlies which prevailed ’round Cape St. Vincent were at this latitude usually tending northerly, down where ships turned for the Caribbean. Today, though, they were perversely backing, blowing from west-nor’west, and it wasn’t exactly the clearest day he’d ever seen, either. “Mister Braxton, any reply from the flag?” he inquired.
“Uhm, nossir,” the midshipman replied, a digit up his nose.
“You can’t tell from the deck, sir,” Lewrie rasped. “Go aloft. They may not have seen it yet. Captain, sir?”
“What is it, Mister Lewrie?” Braxton grumbled impatiently.
“Signal flag’s streaming, larboard quarter to starboard bows, sir. Might be unreadable yonder.”
Captain Braxton rocked back on his heels, craning his neck to peer upward over his shoulder. “Has the flagship replied?” he bade of the midshipman, now in the mizzen top.
“No return signal, sir! They’re barely in sight!”
“Damn,” Braxton growled, scratching his unshaven chin. Cockerel was almost t’gallants-down over the horizon from the squadron, with the wind fluttering her alert toward the unidentified ships.
“Mister Lewrie, we’ll put about. Lay her close-hauled on this lar-board tack. We’ll close the flagship, then spy out our visitors.”
“Aye aye, sir. Bosun!” he roared through his brass speaking trumpet. “Hands to the braces! Man for full-and-by!”
Lewrie had little charity for the captain; even so, he thought it professionally slovenly not to have alerted the squadron first off, before going to Quarters and turning eastward, even further down-wind out of visual, and signaling, range.
Cockerel came trundling about, bows chopping on the lively sea, shrouds and lines beginning to moan to the apparent wind. Abeam the wind as she’d been sailing, it had not seemed so boisterous; but now spray dashed high as the bulwarks, and she heeled, hobbyhorsing over long-set wavetops, loping into the wind something champion.
It took a quarter-hour on that exhilarating beat before they fetched high enough above the hazy horizon, before Windsor Castle rose tops’l high, and finally caught her urgent signal. Bunting soared up the flagship’s masts, and sails foreshortened, as the squadron of line-of-battle ships altered course eastward, to get in on whatever it was which the scouting frigate had found.
“Now, by God . . .” Braxton snapped. “Put about, Quartermaster. Make her course due east. Haul our wind, Mister Lewrie.”
Back they flew toward the unidentified ships which were now well below the horizon, without the tiniest scrap of masthead trucks visible, guessing at where they might reappear.
“Buggered off to loo’rd once they spotted us,” Lewrie opined with Mr. Dimmock. “If they had a lick o’ sense, o’ course.”
“Bound for Toulon or Marseilles, perhaps, sir,” the sailing master agreed. “But . . . be they French East Indiamen, they’d hope to get inshore, finish at that L’Orient of theirs, on the Bay of Biscay and—
“Silence, both of you,” Braxton barked. “Speculate off duty, not on. We’ve work to do. Or hadn’t you noticed, sirs?”
“Of course, sir,” they almost chorused.
“SAIL HO!” the lookout shrieked. “ Four points off t’ star board bows! Five sail, same’z afore, there!”
“Running?” Braxton shouted back.
“Can’t tell, sir!”
“Allow me to go aloft, sir,” Lewrie bade, wriggling with curiosity. And to get away from Braxton for a few precious moments.
“Uhm . . . very well,” the captain grudgingly allowed, giving him a grumpy once-over. Lewrie snatched his personal telescope from the binnacle-cabinet rack and dashed for the mizzen chains.
Up the ratlines on the windward side, where the ship’s angle of heel made the ascent less steep, laying out on the futtock shrouds, then up and over the mizzen top deadeyes onto the upper shrouds for the crosstrees, with Cockerel shrinking to a toothpick below him. A heaving, wallowing toothpick, and the mastheads swaying like treetops in a stiff wind.
They were almost hull-up to him, those unknown ships. Running downwind almost at Cockerel ’s point-of-sail, with the wind large on their larboard quarters. Big, dark, bulky three-masters, as impressive as 1st Rates. There were winks of cloudy sunshine on their wide sterns, on transom windows, gilt galleries and an acre of glass. But they were not warships. They looked like Compagnie des Indies ships, stiff with priceless Asian cargoes, and loaded so heavily they wallowed in the sea like cattle on a boggy moor. Cockerel had fetched them hull-up, almost in the time it had taken Lewrie to scale the mast! They could not outrun her. Slow and logy as the squadron’s line-of-battle ships were to the west, even they would overhaul them within the hour.
“Seen their like before, Gittons?” he asked the mizzen lookout, lending him the heavy, shotgun-long telescope at full extension.
“Lor’, sir! Indiamen, sure’z Fate. Too fancy t’be 1st Rates . . . e’en Frog 1st Rates,” he cackled. “Be some prize money comin’ our way, by God, they’ll be, Mister Lewrie. Whaww, though . . .”
“Where away?” Lewrie asked, knowing from Gittons’s cautious tone there was trouble in gaining that fortune in prize money.
“Almos’ dead on th’ bows, sir . . . ’at fifth sail? Abeam th’ wind, almos’ cocked up full-an’-by. 5th Rate, I say, sir. Big frigate.”
Lewrie retrieved his telescope and swung it to the left. There was a large ship there, at right angles to their course, one of the big forty-four-gunned 5th Rates the French were building, with eighteen- or twenty-four-pounders . . . the sort of frigate they might use to command a small overseas squadron. And she was already flying her national colours, the vertical stripes of blue-white-red of Republican France.
“Warship!” Lewrie bawled. “Deck, there! Frigate on our lee bow!”
He took hold of the standing backstay, slung the telescope on his shoulder, and half-slid, half-monkeyed his way back down, his legs clasped about the stay.
“A 5th Rate, sir?” Braxton demanded before his feet hit the deck. “A warship, sir? What about the others?”
“Indiamen, sir. With one warship for escort. They’re running almost free on a landsman’s breeze,” Lewrie explained, panting with his exertion and his excitement. “She’s bearing almost north, close-hauled, to interpose. She’ll cross our bows in a few minutes, sir.”
Braxton tucked his hands behind his back and paced the wind-ward side of the quarterdeck, a naval captain’s inviolate sanctuary when he was on deck. Lewrie noted that Braxton’s blunt fingers were twining and fretting.
“And the squadron, Mister Lewrie?” he grimaced, turning to look in-board to his officers.
“Uhm . . . coming up astern, sir. I didn’t . . .” He flushed.
Petulance twisted Braxton’s mouth; it looked like he had muttered fool! “Aloft, there! What of the squadron?”
“Courses ’bove t’ horizon, sir!” the lookout shouted back. “Be line-abreast, starboard quarter’ off t’ wind, sir!”
God, one could espy their tops’ls from the deck, Lewrie thought! There they were, stretched out, bows-on to Cockerel, arrayed like beads on a string, a little sou’west of her stern. Were there to be a fight, they could bear off, or bear up to windward, and form line-of-battle. Or dash on, if Vice-Admiral Cosby ordered general chase, and run those Frog merchantmen to ground, one at a time.
“Mister Lewrie,” Captain Braxton decided, snapping his fingers to summon him to the windward side. “We’ll harden up, close-hauled.”
“Same course as yon forty-four, sir,” Lewrie nodded in understanding. “Trading shots with her, though, sir . . . eighteen-pounders . . .”
“Are you a coward, as well as a fool, sir?” Braxton blustered.
“Sir, I am not!” Lewrie shot back. “I’m as ready as you, when it comes to fighting this ship. I wished to ask if you wanted to overhaul in her best gun range, sir, or lask down to her on a bowand-quarter-line. Allow me to suggest we lask, sir, then haul our wind, cross her stern and rake her . . . sir.”
Call me any kind of fool, or sham, he thought; but you never call me a coward, you bastard. Now you go too bloody far!
As if sensing that he had gone too far, Braxton stifled a belchlike flood of outrage which rose in his chest, and turned away.
“Close-hauled, aye aye, sir,” Lewrie parroted, going amidships. “Bosun, hands to the braces! Hard-sheets! Lay her full-and-by!”
He could see the French frigate from the deck by then, long and sleek, like a cut-down line-of-battle ship, a touch of poop, a bit of forecastle, with her courses well up over the horizon. She swung from dead on their bows to the starboard side, just forward of abeam as Cockerel turned nor’east. They would slowly overhaul, and head-reach her on this course, though a couple of miles out of gunnery range. Or their own. Alan expected her to haul her wind any moment. Surely the French lookouts could see the squadron’s threatening tops’ls by then.
What a bloody wasted effort, Lewrie thought, his senses acute and calculating. He felt they should be hauling their wind, going for the Frog 5th Rate like a terrier, then nipping past her stern at close range. Give her a well-timed broadside, then dash on past to get at the merchantmen. Every ship in sight would share in the prize money if one or all of them were taken. But Cockerel was the only frigate present—the rest were too far to the south, or far to the north of the squadron. Their misfortune, he smirked! Out of sight, out of the running. And that was what frigates were for.
Cockerel barreled on, surging and slashing at the uncooperative sea, slowly head-reaching until the French warship was just a bit aft of abeam. They could turn now, go tearing down on her, and still pass within half a cable of her stern, if she held her course and did not shorten sail. Lewrie began to pat his foot in anxiety.
“Excuse me, sir,” he asked, going back to windward to join his captain. “Should we not allow her four-points-free, so we may fall to loo’rd, onto her, sir?”
“It is my decision, sir. Now be still!” Braxton hissed, wheeling on him. “The squadron, sir, will daunt them. She’ll haul wind, she can’t trade fire with the liners. Attend to your duties, sir.”
“Sir, should she haul her wind, there’s still the Indiamen—”
“I gave you an order, Mister Lewrie!”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“There, d’ye see, hah?” Braxton hooted with scorn suddenly. “She’s falling off, at last. Turning to run! Now, Mister Lewrie . . . now you may haul our wind. Gybe, and steer sou’east.”
“Aye aye, sir,” he replied evenly.
Damme, another puzzle, he carped! Should be due east, by God; go right for ’em! This’ll put us the same distance from the Indiamen, or the frigate. What’s Braxton playing at?
“Bosun, prepare to wear to the starboard tack.”
“ Wear, sir?” Bosun Fairclough gaped from the waist below him.
“Aye, wear, Mister Fairclough,” Lewrie repeated testily. “Stations for wearing ship! Main clew garnets . . . buntlines, there!” he called through the speaking trumpet. “Spanker brails, weather main and lee braces! Manned?”
Hands darted to the pin rails and fife rails to undo belays on the running rigging, to tail on and prepare to take a strain once the lines were free of all but the last over-under hitch on belaying pins.
“Come on, lads! Smartly, now!” he urged them. “ Manned, damnyer eyes? Smartly, I said!”
“Drive ’em, Bosun! Smartly!” Braxton interrupted. “Lay on yer starters!”
The hands were readying for a wear, but it was damn’ slow work—handsome work—church work. Petty officers and midshipmen lathered the slow and the clumsy (and there were more than a few on the gangways who were suddenly struck clumsy, Lewrie noted!) with rope starters. The hands flinched, like flicked steers, as the starters cracked on their coats. But that didn’t make them very much faster.
“Oh, Christ . . .” Lewrie whispered, seeing the game for what it was at once. “Come on, lads! There’s a fortune in prize money downwind, so let’s be at it! All manned? Haul taut! Ready about? Up mains’l and spanker! Clear away after bowlines! Brace in the after yards!” Lewrie turned to the senior quartermaster, and in a softer voice cautioned, “Handsomely does it. New heading, sou’east. Right! Up-helm, Quartermaster!”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Overhaul weather lifts! Man the weather braces! Rise fore-tack and sheet!”
Cockerel fell off the wind, heeling harder to starboard, laying her shoulder to the sea, sloughing and snuffling foam as she lost way, and the sea gripped her more firmly. With the wind swinging rapidly onto her larboard quarter, growing finer and finer, Lewrie looked to the commissioning pendant aloft, then aft, judging the best moment to anticipate a stern wind. There!
“Clear away head bowlines, lay the head-yards square! Shift over jib fore-sheets! Come on, smartly, now! Move!” he fumed at the crew, whose efforts had turned so ox-slow, so hen-headed awkward.
“Jaysis, bloody . . . !” the senior helmsman yelped suddenly, and Lewrie turned his head to see the huge double wheel’s spokes spinning like a Saint Catherine’s wheel at a fair. The steering-tackle ropes bound ’round the wheel drum were sizzling and smoking as they unwound themselves! “No helm, sir, no helm!”
“Avast, there!” he called, trying to head off disaster. “Back the fore-sheets, flat ’em in! Lee braces, Bosun, main and . . .”
Too late. Cockerel was across the eye of the wind, with her after and main yardarms angled to take a stern wind, the main and forecourses smothered so far, but not for long. She carried a lot of weather-helm, and was going to round up. For a moment, her yards would luff ineffectually, then, as she swung her bows windward, they’d fill again—pressing against the masts and spars, snapping her upper masts like carrots, if they weren’t quick about it!
This ought to be damned int’restin’, Lewrie thought, with what felt like a stupefied calmness; we’re going to broach this barge!
“Lee braces, damn you! Smartly! Let go weather braces!”
With a tremendous whooshing sound, much like a gargantuan bird, the spanker filled and flew across the quarterdeck overhead, dragging the men of the starboard after-guard, tailing on what was now a weather sheet, in a tug of war they could never win.
They let go, tumbling in a heap. They let go! The spanker was a slightly older design, a loose-footed trapezoidal sail suspended from a light wooden gaff, with the after-most, lower-most corner, the clew, the attachment point for the sheets. With a sharp crack, the gaff yard met the much heavier mizzenmast cro’jack yard, which directed the set of the mizzen tops’l and spread its foot. The spanker gaff shattered, of course, dangling half the upper length of the spanker like a duck with a broken wing, which let it swing further out-board to tangle in the larboard mizzen stays! Taken by surprise, the larboard sheetmen of the after-guard stood slack-jawed, and slack-fingered, and let the larboard sheet snake over the side, along with the weather sheet!
Both sheets, Lewrie goggled: both the bloody sheets?
“Heavy-haul on the braces, fore, main and cro’jack!” he howled as Cockerel wallowed, now heeling to larboard. The y could save their masts, if the bows could be got down. They could steer downwind without the rudder, for a time, if the hands were quick.
But the deck was already inclined over twenty degrees of heel, and the men were laid back almost parallel to the gangways. It wasn’t clumsy, semi-mutinous theatrics now. They began to slip and fall, to go sprawling on their backs, to slide to leeward into the bulwarks as their bare feet lost purchase; or were dragged toward the pin rails as they tried to hold onto the braces, by the enormous pressure of wind on the sails which exerted tons of pull on the lines.
Cockerel groaned in outraged protest as she swung up a-weather, the wind rapidly clocking forward of abeam, laid over so far that water surged high as the gun ports on the lee side, and the breeching ropes of the starboard battery sang a taut torment. Masts, spars, rigging, hull . . . her wail was a chorus of danger, and the sea surged hungrily.
